Endspiel

One of them is blind and cannot walk, the other can see but is unable to sit down. Samuel Beckett’s world-famous play ENDSPIEL (“Endgame”) presents the clown-like double act of Hamm and his servant Clov at the end of time. Hamm is dependant on Clov’s eyes, while the latter studies the world outside through a telescope: a deserted landscape and an endless sea of grey. Reliant on each other, they while away the time with battles of words — intelligent, incisive and darkly humorous. At the heart of this endgame lies nothing less than the incomprehensible nature of human existence. Beckett’s classic of the theatre of the absurd is still resonant today and so in Kay Voges’s production, Lum and Purl from Wolfram Lotz’s “Einige Nachrichten an das All” (“Some Messages to the Universe”) — two kindred spirits of Hamm and Clov — take over their wrestling with nothingness. “I want to bring poetry into drama, a poetry which has been through the void and makes a new start in a new room-space.” (Samuel Beckett). An evening that combines absurdity, humour and existential depth, perhaps less to be understood than to be experienced. After stops in Dortmund, Tbilisi, Antalya, Friedrichshafen, Bielefeld, Wuzhen, Vienna and Zagreb, Kay Voges’ legendary production can now finally be seen in Cologne as well.