'Endgame' Brings Its A-Game

Senior Paris K. Ellsworth ’15 is not playing it safe with his directorial debut, Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” While searching for the right script, Ellsworth saw Beckett’s revolutionary play “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway, which inspired him to further investigate the works of the Irish avant-garde writer. “‘Endgame’ seemed too good to be true for the college setting,” he says, highlighting the play’s absurdist, irreverent humor. The 80-minute one-act play will run May 1-9 in the Loeb Experimental Theater.

An example of “Theatre of the Absurd,” an experimental form of drama that dominated Europe in the 1950s and ’60s, “Endgame” presents unique challenges to the director and the cast in their quest to use the play’s ambiguous areas to make the audience think critically. “You can analyze the play all you want, and everyone will have a different interpretation,” Ellsworth says. The witty repartee exchanged between the blind tyrant Hamm (Joshuah B. “Soup” Campbell ’16) and his servant Clov (Dan S. Milaschewski ’17) and between Hamm’s dustbin-inhabiting parents Nagg (David A. Sheynberg ’16) and Nell (Ema H. Horvath ’16) will rely heavily on comedic timing to keep audiences entertained even when the thematic content of their dialogue verges on abstract. Beckett even acknowledges this dynamic in Hamm’s line, “The whole thing is comical, I grant you that. What about having a good guffaw, the two of us together?” Hamm and Clov’s ensuing antics aim to encourage the audience to join them in this pursuit.

Under Ellsworth’s careful instruction, cast members Campbell, Milaschewski, and Sheynberg seek to bring the same ecstatic energy they demonstrated in more elaborate productions like Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ 2015 “¡Oops!...Madrid It Again” to a more intimate performance. Horvath rounds out the four-person cast, over whose members Ellsworth long deliberated. “[It seemed like it might be] impossible to find the right actors,” Ellsworth says. “I wanted them all mentally involved right away—not to just tell them what to do.” According to Ellsworth, the poetry, metaphors, and symbolism the play contains force the cast to spend more time rehearsing each scene than might be necessary in a more traditional production. Despite the lengthy process, the cast’s enthusiasm for the material is evident in their on-stage presence. Campbell adds, “Absurdist humor appeals to my sensibilities—you never know where the banter is going until you get there.”

The cast points out that “Endgame” features a particularly minimalist style in part because Beckett originally wrote it in French, a language in which he had not yet achieved total fluency. Campbell, who read the play in both English and French prior to beginning rehearsals, said that the two versions differ mainly in the pace of dialogue delivery. “The turns of phrase in the quick back-and-forth are slightly different—the play is really quite musical, and the rhythm differs across the French and the Irish-inflected English.”

“Endgame” seeks to baffle and intrigue audiences, while piquing their interest in a lesser-known style of dramatic production and showcasing the talents of its small-but-powerful cast and its inexperienced-but-dedicated director. The cast hopes that Beckett’s unusual, offbeat humor will both challenge and entertain audiences.