Never-ending Endgame

>> Gleams Theatre gleans
boredom from Beckett

ZZZZZ: Endgame

by AMY BARRATT

Here’s hoping Woody Allen got more laughs.

Westmount-based Gleams Theatre is currently alternating Allen’s Central Park West with Samuel Beckett’s Endgame at the MainLine. I attended a performance of the latter.

The best thing about this Endgame is an opening sound-and-light sequence. Even that goes on too long. This was among the worst productions I’ve seen in the last decade.

Endgame is theatre of the absurd. Director Constantin Sokolov has taken that to mean that no action needs any sort of justification. Actors move around or stay put because the script tells them to—no more. That’s not theatre of the absurd, it’s bad theatre.

On the other hand, the audience does get into the spirit of the play in some ways. The incessant dripping sound is enough to drive anyone to drink. Also, it’s cold in the MainLine this time of year, so when Hamm says, “Give me a rug, I’m freezing,” we empathize. When he says, “It’s time it ended,” we desperately hope for Clov to agree so we can all go home. It does begin to feel like this bare, dark room is all that’s left of the world, so maybe Sokolov has a plan after all. The problem is, there’s no way people are going to pay money for the experience he’s offering.

If anybody in the production has even a slim grasp of the material, it is not evident on stage. The actors, by this point in the run, must realize that what they are doing is not working (they are at close enough range to notice the audience members nodding off in turns). If I were them, I’d be trying anything I could think of, however inappropriate, just to jump this jalopy’s dead engine.

Hamm (Sam Croitoru), though blind and confined to a wheelchair, is supposed to be a tyrant, manipulating Clov (Jonathan Marquis) into staying with him. In this production, Clov is too caught up in his own world of shtick and business to notice any ploy attempted by Hamm. Someone needs to remind this cast that a funny voice does not, any more than a shaking hand, a character make.

Croitoru, Marquis and Darlene Lenden, who plays Nell in Endgame, also appear in Central Park West, where they’re joined by Polly Nelson and Karolina Armata. It’s a story of marital infidelity that one critic described as “a lovely whirlwind montage of one-liners, phallic jokes, fist fights and martinis.”

FRUIT AND FUR

You’ve seen the movie Fur, about the photographer Diane Arbus, now get a different take with the play Fruits Unheard Of. Written and directed by Caitlin Murphy (Brazen, The O Show) and produced by her Small Pond Productions, the play features Nadia Verrucci (Carmela’s Table) as Arbus. It’s at the Calixa-Lavallée Theatre to April 15. Tickets are $12–$15; reserve by e-mail at small.pond.prod@gmail.com

Endgame, April 13 and 15 at 8 p.m.;
Central Park West, April 12 and 14 at 8 p.m.,
both at Mainline Theatre (3997 St-Laurent),
$15–$18, (514) 934-0535