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Summary: "Endgame" - Ghastly!
Review: "Endgame" is a crude and despicable play. It's not a classic and a pitiable excuse of a play. Utterly useless and does not deserve our time. The characters are one dimensional, lacking, and unrealistic. The plot is morally confusing and worthless. I do not recommend.
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Summary: Surreal theatrical creations
Review: "Endgame and Act Without Words" brings together 2 theater pieces by Samuel Beckett. The book is translated from the French by the author."Endgame" is a strange, surreal play about the relationship between a chair-bound man and his caretaker. It has both humorous and sad aspects as these characters deal with their past history. Pain and physical decay are significant themes in this play. Storytelling is an important motif here: Beckett seems to be asking if stories liberate or enslave us. "Act Without Words" is a one-person mime in which a performer interacts with various moving props onstage. Overall, these two pieces did not make that great an impact on me; I was really expecting more. I recommend the book if you're interested in theatrical surrealism.
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Summary: "Endgame" - Ghastly!
Review: "Endgame" is a crude and despicable play. It's not a classic and a pitiable excuse of a play. Utterly useless and does not deserve our time. The characters are one dimensional, lacking, and unrealistic. The plot is morally confusing and worthless. I do not recommend.
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Summary: Shattering and stunning
Review: Absolutely brilliant. Beckett's play will leave you speechless and thinking for days...It is horrifyingly beautiful. A must-read.
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Summary: Wonderful writing on several different perspectives
Review: Endgame is a beautiful example of why Samuel Beckett is hailed as one of the greatest playwrites of the 20th century. Beckett, one of the most profound exestentialists of all time is famous for not only his brilliant dialouge (so real and beautiful) but also for his amazing characters. Endgame is a perfect example of this. If you are considering reading this play, or any other by Beckett, I suggest you prepare yourself. Do not expect Death of a Salesman here, because you are going to get the exact opposite. Without proper analyzation, Endgame appears to have no real meaning or plot so to speak. Baisically, it is about two men struggling to get along with each other, one whom had raised the other since birth. The entire one act play is based on their rising conflict with each other, and on the developement of both the major characters, Clov and Hamm. Although this may seem to you as not much to base a play on, the art of exestencialism is based on human emotion and existence. Therefore, it is the perfect place to describe a character in depth. If you are still having difficulty understanding the meaning of Endgame, analyze it as a feud between an aging father and a teenage son. The aging father yells and is tired of the teen, but still wants to hold him. The teen is tired of the father, but still listens to him until a certain line is crossed. That line will become clearer in Endgame by Samuell Beckett, a true masterpiece, which I highly recommend.
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Summary: lithium wasn't as successful as Engame
Review: I am a diagnosed manic depressive with psychprenic tendencies and all I took salvation in was directing plays. My most theraputic play ws Engame, what a beautiful saga. That saved me from many terrifing nights alone with my mind. Samuel Beckett is in my mind is my savour.
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Summary: I know it's a classic, but...
Review: I know this play is suppose to be a classic and a master of it's genre. But if this is the best this genre can produce, this genre must be worse than "Plan 9 From Outer Space". The play is trite and cliched. It's whole meaning is that everything is meaningless. Is it just me or is that a bit ironic? Unless you have to read this play for school, don't read it. If I had gone to see this play in a theatre I would have walked out after 5 minuntes. Why can't people write good and decent plays like Shakespeare or Sophoclese. (I know I spelled them wrong, Sorry.) This new genre of pointless dialogue is, well, pointless. I wonder if all of these playwrites are writing these plays and laughing at the fools that think they are good. Beckett is probably laughing in his grave because he is still fooling people. If you like non-sense, and you like to look like you are philisophical, go ahead and read it, but don't say you weren't warned.
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Summary: mainly a correction of a previous reviewer
Review: I love Endgame, I think it's on the same level as Godot and sticks with you in just the same way, but I'm mainly using this as an opportunity to correct the reviewer who said that on his deathbed Beckett answered the question of what he had found meaningful in life by saying "Very little." In truth he said "Precious little," which, while sounding similar at first, when you think about it is quite a different way of putting it. We see this less in the drama, but in Beckett's prose there is definitely the idea of small traces of beauty and compassion to be found amid the muck and endless wandering--the girl on the beach who expresses concern for Molloy in the Trilogy, for instance. So I think we really need to keep in mind that, as bleak as Beckett's work may be, he is not some sort of complete pessimist on the level of someone like Cioran. The drama may not have individual redeeming elements, but I think that the staging of the play is intended to provoke something of a modern catharsis through its bleakness, and at the same time an affirmation by seeing it brought to reality and others witnessing it.
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Summary: From Oedipus to Lear to Hamm--the blind man's procession
Review: In "King Lear" Shakespeare asked far more questions than he could answer, and by the end of the play little was resolved: unfit leaders would perpetuate the march of folly. Shakespeare's work followed many themes from "Oedipus" and both spoke to the ethos of their times. If any twentieth century play deserves to be considered the heir to "Oedipus" and "Lear" then Beckett's "Endgame" should rank right along with the other two. In Beckett's finest theatrical work, he places a blind man in Job's world, but in this case there is no answer from the heavens; instead Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell have to invent their own worlds, reconstructing the past and deconstructing themselves while Beckett himself reconstructs and deconstructs theater. One line best sums up the play and provides probably the best motto for the twentieth century: "the end is in the beginning and yet you go on." Many have seen this play as a dar! k Kafkaesque nighmare, but I see it as a true existential affirmation of what Camus saw as acting in good faith--choosing to play the game and go on with life even though there is little reason to play on.
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Summary: A Graphic Rendering Gone Horribly Wrong
Review: My graphics class had a choice between Godot and this to render the costumes for. I chose this one, with the idea that they were birds, and a keeper. Though seemingly obscure, the absurdities of the play made it work. This is an excellent read for anyone who likes a good absurdest play, and is willing to dig through some lengthy dialogue to get there.
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