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SHOES THAT ARE LEFT BEHIND: GÁBOR TOMPAS BECKETT HERITAGE are weeping. Ihis space has no access to the outside world: although Clov opens the two small, round windows occasionally, they let in no draught, sound, or light of any kind. Metal, which seems to be the only surviving material, fills the entire evening starting from the convex, sharp-edged, silver letters of A játszma vége [Endgame] on the front page of the theatre program to the aluminium ladder, Hamm’s three-legged dog made of a massive, long metal spring, and the large metallic ventilation pipes that run along the walls so that some air can enter the inhabitants’ maximum security prison. Also, in the opening tableau, Hamm and his parents are covered with aluminium foil before the unveiling. However, the bins themselves are transparent with circular, metallic tops, and some elastic fabric in the middle in which Nagg and Nell spend their days like two chrysalids in an intermediate state. The tension between the characters, the war between Hamm and Clov, which Beckett called the “nucleus of the play” during the 1967 Schiller Theater rehearsals,*° works palpably throughout. Jozsef Bird’s Hamm, the actor and the writer, sitting in a red armchair on casters, is just one step away from finishing his story at the start of the action, but of course this last step may last for decades. However, it is Laszl6 Zsolt Bartha’s Clov who grows up in front of our eyes, as he, through Hamm’s cruelty and his own increasing anger, gradually understands his own situation. Tompa and Visky resourcefully amplify the tension in Clov; the ladder that he carries around, and at times almost throws at Hamm, is a constant signifier of his temper. There are certain hate-mimes that he keeps doing behind the master’s back, and one can see how his irritation rises as he receives from Hamm one laborious task after another. At one point, when Hamm talks about his dog on the ground looking at him, begging him for a walk, Clov kneels down to Hamm’s stroking hand, pretending to be an obedient dog, understanding that he is being treated like a dog. From that moment, there is no turning back. The rhythm of the production is sharp, precise, following Beckett’s instructions — it drives Hamm to the verge of finishing his Opus Magnum, and drives Clov into becoming the second generation that questions the first (or the third that questions the second, rather), and reproaches him for his past sins and mistakes. It is through this process that Clov finally steps in exactly at the point where Hamm interrupts his story. In Tompa’s interpretation, when Clov finally goes up the ladder and perhaps catches sight of a boy, it is a provocation towards Hamm, an open admission of being aware of his own past, of where he had come from and how he, Clov, had entered Hamm’s service, which might bear a strong connection to the man who asked for some bread for his son on a Christmas Eve. At the moment Clov tells Hamm about the boy, Hamm’s tone 35 Gontarski, S. E. (ed.): The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, Volume II, Endgame, London, Faber and Faber, 1992, 50. + 97 +
