Endgame
The
Other Side Theater at the Back Door Theater
4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 938-1482.
8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 pm Sundays. Closes June 24.
$5-$7.50.
This production of Samuel Beckett's mysterious, Endgame
marks the end of one of the most innovative fringe companies
in Portland.
"Every day vulgarizes one's hostility, and turns anger into
irritation and petulance."
--Samuel Beckett
"In my opinion,
the most profound drama in the modern theater."--Herbert
Blau on Endgame
For five years, the Other Side Theater has been one of
the saving graces of this city's theater scene. With few
resources and less funding, the company has consistently
produced interesting work. It's true that the young members'
reach occasionally exceeded their grasp, but no one could
doubt their sincerity, devotion and talent. When they got
it right--Marie and Bruce, Craving Gravy, Ubu Roi and
Machinal--they produced some of the most exciting
theater in Portland, and their departure to pursue their
art elsewhere leaves a large hole.
Yet they leave on a high note, as Sean Doran's production
of Endgame is, in many ways, the Other Side's most
mature work.
Life's a butcher's theater. We're thrown on stage to drag
a cross of meat and bone until a promised curtain drops.
Our task is to learn how to carry the cross, which hourly
grows fat on pain and futility. Some stake center stage,
howling into God's deafness, while others play out a killing
routine of time-clock-to-tavern-to-television. "That's how
it is on this bitch of an earth," as Beckett himself put
it in Waiting for Godot. But in the crack of doom
that never widens, we learn to endure. And if we're lucky,
we might find some grandeur amidst the trash and trivia,
the sickroom stench that only suicide can cut.
In a house by a dead sea, blind and crippled Hamm sits
in a battered armchair. He's joined by a servant son, Clov,
whose jobs are to push Hamm's chair around, dispense painkillers,
and store Hamm's last props: a gaff and stuffed dog. Clov
also feeds Hamm's parents, Nag and Nell, a codger and crone
without legs, who live stuffed in ash cans. Hamm's house
is as bleak as the blasted landscape where Didi and Gogo
wait for Godot: a barrenness lit by a clay-gray light, where
stories are told at the void's cusp.
Hamm's identity is one of Beckett's best riddles. He's
a defunct Prospero, a figure of some spent power. Is Hamm
God? He's certainly as blind. And can Clov be Christ? He
does parrot the cross-bound messiah's voice. Or, perhaps,
he's that other son of God, the cloven-footed Lucifer, now
banished to Hamm's hot kitchen, where he stews on Hamm's
death, which he's powerless to cause. Is this the great
leper house of the Lord?
Certainly, there's a great maturity in this production's
tone and pacing; past Other Side pieces were often overwhelmed
with wild inventiveness. But Doran has found the perfect
pitch for this production, signaling the growth of his interpretive
intelligence. He's also wisely hired Amanda Boekelheide
to provide movement, which invests this piece with its staggering
style.
There is one problem here, and that's Jennifer Hoyt's performance
as Hamm. Hoyt never fails to supply electric performances,
but though she understands Hamm intellectually and physically,
she's burdened herself with an affected voice that limits
her range. Too often, she's forced into a rasping, choleric
gruffness, when more nuanced tones are wanted. Tom Gallup
as Clov needs less volume but otherwise gives a fantastic
performance. Gallup captures Clov's submissive hostility
perfectly and dominates the stage with his character's brutal
lameness. As Nag and Nell, James Moore and Lucy Smith are
excellent, and it's a disturbing moment when they rise from
their ash cans, chalk-blanched figures in filthy nightclothes.
Doran's grasp is sure, and he honors Beckett's vision by
discarding curtain calls, leaving us where we began: "You
must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
If only The Other Side would.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
