Accessibility
Search
Close this search box.

The SNT Drama Ljubljana rounds off its 2020/21 season repertoire with the absurdist-dystopian one-act play Endgame. It is considered, alongside Waiting for Godot, »tragicomedy in two acts«, one of the most celebrated works by the Irish playwright and versatile artist Samuel Beckett. Translated by Srečko Fišer. Endgame is directed, set and lighting designed by Diego de Brea. Other creative team members include Mojca Kranjc (dramaturg), Blagoj Micevski (costume designer), Metod Novak (lighting designer) Klasja Kovačič (language consultant), and Alja Bračun (rehearsal process observer). The cast includes Matija Rozman, Veronika Drolc, Jurij Zrnec and, alternating, Igor Samobor and Gregor Baković.

Endgame introduces us to four anti-heroes who are marked and incapacitated in one way or another. These characters with unusual names are healthy (they are not sick or infected), but each in their own way disabled, damaged, incapacitated, helpless. Hamm (Igor Samobor/Gregor Baković), the lame and blind master, Clov (Jurij Zrnec), his loyal servant and foster son who is unable to sit down), and Nagg (Matija Rozman) and Nell (Veronika Drolc), Hamm’s father and mother, are living a miserable life in a non-descript shack in the middle of a desolate nothingness. Three of them are able to see, but only one of them can actually see and report on the world outside, because he is the only one who can climb the ladder leaning against the window and report on the world outside. According to him, the world is nothing but one motionless greyness, in the manner of a teichoscopy (viewing from the walls) – or maybe he is only making it up and it is simply his little game in a series of points that are »being played« by the characters. The only thing they can perform is life itself; and they make the most of what it takes in this improvised impromptu act:  they take a thing or two from the ancient Greeks, they nick something else from the commedia dell’arte, they casually quote the Bible and refer to Hegel, and even some old Jewish joke comes in handy. Trapped in a vicious circle of nothingness, the quartet fights its way through time with grotesque attempts to stage life …  According to Diego in his production note, »in this world, Beckett’s hero has nothing but the awareness of his own nothingness – mere chance can take everything away from him – but he still has the power to say »I«. With his feet in the mud and with the eternally non-attainable sky, he travels towards his inevitable self-destruction.«

Close