This desolate masterpiece by Samuel Beckett has often been interpreted as post-apocalyptic. Outside is the end of the world with no more sun or nature. Inside the last humans are left standing. Instead of playing master-slave games, Lindsay Posner’s production turns them into desperate entertainers who wisecrack, amuse and perform even in these hopeless circumstances.
This theatre describes the play as a “macabre comedy” and that is what is rendered on stage. The blind, seated Hamm (Douglas Hodge, returning to the stage after more than a decade) is not so much a tyrant as an aged thespian, even if he whistles for his limping servant, Clov (Mathew Horne), and consigns his parents to dustbins. He bears elements of Winnie from Happy Days in his whimsy and escape into storytelling.
