Review of Endgame

Review of Endgame.

“Endgame” means “endless game” in this play because I believe something is being passed through the generations even though they were not biologically fathers and sons.

In my opinion, this play was very meaningful and hard to lift out the mean point of it, and different people have different focusing and understanding of it. After all, I felt I learnt a lot from it. 

First of all, a hard play can challenge my ability of analyzing it. And as I mentioned in the class, I believe this play was trying to show some cycles/patterns between father and son, love and being loved and also dependent and independent. Talking about the little boy, I still think there is actually a little right there, or at least Clov can see him, and that might symbolize he sees himself. Because of the “father and son” pattern, I imagine that the story before this play was probably like Hamm is serving his father, Hamm was the one who can only stand, and his father can only sit. And then later, when Hamm was not able to stand any more, it was the time that his father lost his legs and went to “live” inside the “coffin”. I am still not sure whether Hamm’s parents were alive or not. Then Clov became the one who served as a son. So in my opinion, Hamm’s next step is probably same as his father, and Clov’s next step is like was Hamm is like right now. And there will be a young man who joins in and serves as a son. This is an endless cycle. 

I also wondered did the play want to portray the relationships between father and son, or the meaning for love? Which part did it mainly focus on? The character Clov can move freely, and actually he did not need to obey Hamm. And think the reason why he always listened to Hamm was he felt lonely, and in his mind, this little space, this disable man was his belonging. The whole word was destroyed, and that is why he has no where to go. This was how Clov depended on Hamm. And of course, Hamm needed to depend on Clov because he was blind and cannot move without others help. He could not do anything by himself. He needed Clov, his son, very much. So what is the meaning of life, if it is the end of the world? Doing aimless thing? Why these four characters still wanted to be alive in this kind of world? There were so many things I do not understand. 

Talking about the actors, I think they were wonderful. I really admired the way Clov and Hamm controlled their voice and tones such perfectly and used the staging stuff caught audiences’ attentions. I think this play is a tragedy, but they were still trying to illuminate some humor things out. Those humor definitely lighted up the play many times. 

Another thing is I was really interested in the way they painted the background-half white&half grey, and the separation of two colors was right at the half of the little windows-which was really interesting, but I could not get the meaning of it. The settings on the stage were just funny to think about, and also the size of two coffins are different. 

Overall, this play was just great, and I really glad I had this chance to watch it.