Endgame - Kalamunda Dramatic Society (9 March 2025)

Life can be absurd. Chaotic. Meaningless. Repetitive. Fraught with setbacks and obstacles. This may sound bleak. But that doesn't mean it isn't honest. Or filled with dark humour and small moments of triumph. 

Most stories lean towards the light. Towards narrative structures and arcs that are familiar and comforting. Storytelling that is ingrained on the human psyche. Aristotle's Poetics. The Hero's Journey. Save the Cat! I'm from that school of writers. Well, maybe not the last one. 

Samuel Beckett is decidedly not. His work stubbornly refuses to conform to those traditional norms. It is absurd, chaotic, and repetitive. It's also often repetitive and bleak. And absurd. Oftentimes chaotic. 

It's a style that can be alienating and confronting. There aren't the normal storytelling rhythms you expect - not in narrative structure, not in the flow and cadence of dialogue. Nor in tidy resolutions or convenient character arcs.

What there is though is adherence to theme. A sort of existential dread as we battle those darker forces in everyday life; from the absurd to the meaningless. The audience grapples for meaning mirroring the characters' own struggle. 

In an intimate theatre such as KADS there's an unspoken compact in a play like Endgame. We are trapped with the characters. We may suffer. We may get frustrated or confused. We laugh at the absurdity and the bleak humour. We might empathise with the plight of these characters. If we pay attention we could actually discern the thread of a more conventional story that is being told; hidden in fragments and ellipses, and the whims of what is possibly an unreliable narrator. At the very least one that delights in bombast. It's a fascinating concoction that challenges an audience and forces us to think. 

It strikes me as a play that demands great patience from its director and cast. Stage directions are performed at an almost metronomic pace which requires an impressive level of discipline. The same with the delivery of dialogue. The pause is the master of all here. In the space between lines. In the stillness between movement. 

The story is set in a place that feels timeless; where the world as we know it has ended for reasons we will never glean. A blind, infirmed man with a cruel intellect - Hamm (Neale Paterson) - who is confined to an armchair set on casters, is engaged in a battle of wills with his servile companion who tends to him and cannot sit - Clov (Zane Alexander). All the while, Hamm's elderly and legless parents - Nagg (Malcolm Douglas) and Nell (Amanda Watson) - who are stuffed in large dustbins watch on helplessly. All of them face an inevitable end the same as the chess pieces and board that adorn the set. 

The metaphor is clear - the chessboard is a finite space and the pieces within it can only move in certain predetermined ways until the game finally comes to a conclusion. Hamm is the King who is to be attended to at all times and whose movement is minimal. Clov, I suspect, is perhaps best suited as a Bishop who can only move awkwardly, legs splayed apart, all diagonal. Nagg and Nell feel like hapless pawns though the dustbins are reminiscent of castles.

It's a handsome and striking set credited to Kresna, Melisa Musulin, Leigh Siragusa, Peter Bloor, Peter Neaves and Virigina Moore Price who also directs here alongside Rosalind Moore. It features two portholes set high on either side of the stage walls - lit to represent the dark/ocean; the other the earth/light. Again, the symmetry with the chessboard is clear. Also two large dustbins that sit atop a table, and Hamm's armchair. 

Makeup and costuming is exaggerated for effect - Nagg and Nell especially looking grotesquely decrepit. There is a sense of decay as the end approaches. The lighting design is very atmospheric as it conceals almost as much as it reveals at times. The porthole lighting is beautifully symbolic.

The acting is excellent. Neale Paterson holds our attention as Hamm even though the character is largely unable to move and his eyes are shielded by sunglasses. It's his voice that commands attention here as Hamm cajoles and belittles Clov whilst pleading for his painkillers and occasionally undercutting theatrical virtuosity with the underplayed aside. Again, the pause is used to great effect.

Zane Alexander is at the top of his game with a wonderfully judged physical performance that is exacting in its repetition and pace. We feel Clov's dilemma - he desperately wants to leave... but where would he go? There is a delicate balance of reproachment, reluctant compliance, and utter exasperation which Alexander cycles through with great skill.

Malcolm Douglas and Amanda Watson are the offbeat comic foil with tragic overtones. Douglas delivers a cutting tale about a man and a tailor with a gloriously dark punchline. Watson tugs briefly at our heartstrings in a wistful manner that belies the darkness. 

Director Virginia Moore Price, who also did the lighting design and was sound and lighting operator for Sunday's matinee, and her co-director Rosalind Moore, stick to their guns in terms of pacing and embracing the inherent absurdism of the piece. Nothing is rushed. There are no apologies here for a style that some audience members may blanch at. 

I confess, it took me an entire day pondering what I had seen to slowly grasp the meaning of the play, as incomplete as that may be. In this way it's like that other lauded play that confounded me last year until it all made sense in the Moore directed Top Girls. It took me a little longer this time! 

Endgame is on at KADS in Kalamunda until 22 March 2025. Be patient with it. Chew over it. Come to your own conclusions and epiphanies. It's part of an encouraging trend in community theatre - putting on complex and challenging works that are a little outside the norm. I love the confidence that signals.