SAN DIEGO COUNTY : THEATER REVIEW : Sledgehammer’s Waiting Game Is a Lengthy One

Those waiting for the July 5 opening of “Waiting for Godot” at the Old Globe Theatre can get a taste of things to come at Sledgehammer Theatre’s “Endgame,” at Horton Parsons Hall through June 25.

Both plays by Nobel Prize-winning playwright Samuel Beckett deal with waiting, although it seems a safe bet that the classical Old Globe will portray the waiting in a vastly different way than the avant-garde Sledgehammer.

In “Waiting for Godot,” the work that catapulted Beckett to fame, two tramps wait for a person, whom they call Godot, even though they do not know for sure if this person made an appointment with them or even exists.

In “Endgame,” a master, Hamm, and his servant, Clov, wait for the end of their relationship, even though the end of the relationship may well mean the end of all life. The blind master, who cannot stand, also cannot survive without his crippled servant. The servant, who cannot sit, cannot survive without his master, who has the only access to all of the food left in creation.

The servant and master are often compared to the spiritual and physical parts of the body, waiting to be severed in the final hour of death.

Director Scott Feldsher’s interpretation of the classic, however, explores a less traveled road.

Feldsher eschews the classic set for this work--a circular structure with two high windows that suggests the inside of a skull--for a cavernous vision of physical decay, designed by Robert Brill.

An introduction to the play by the servant in front of what seems to be a black wall dissolves into a transparent screen through which a room of trailing white linens, broken ladders and platforms lie askew. Water drips slowly into a small, dank pool amid the sand.

The effect is that of a modern wasteland, much in the spirit of the T. S. Eliot poem, but with an apocalyptic twist. In its expansiveness, it seems to defy the idea of the master and servant as being one person and rather suggests a more social interdependence rather like, well, servant and master--a Noah and first mate drowning, rather than surviving, in the devastation of a nuclear holocaust.

Or the master might simply represent the effete ruling class which no longer knows how to do manual labor; the servant the beaten-down worker, forced to obey orders of a master he despises in order to get at the food supply. The two remaining characters, the master’s parents, Nagg and Nell who live in garbage cans and are dressed in antique-looking Victorian garb, would then symbolize the barbaric past that spawned the master.

Interpretations aren’t right or wrong so much as they vary in accessibility and insight.

Sledgehammer’s vision is insightful and lends itself to a variety of interpretations. Its accessibility, however, is somewhat hampered by Feldsher’s insistence at taking the emphasis of waiting in “Endgame” and making it as agonizingly slow for the audience as it is for the characters in the play.

Feldsher uses long pauses and lots of silent footwork to slow the one-act play down to three hours--all without intermission. The excellent ensemble acting by Paul L. Nolan, Bruce McKenzie, Jake Schmidt Sr. and Helen Reed Lehman is impeccable, though they all downplay Beckett’s sly humor in favor of bringing the human tragedy of existence into razor-sharp relief. The costumes by Randi S. Norman are deft, the makeup by Frank Mondana eerily provocative in his use of white clown faces, the sound by Marta Zekan aggressively disturbing.

But the ultimate question for theatergoers may be the question of whether they wish not just to see Beckett’s “Endgame,” but live it. Sledgehammer Theatre may be San Diego’s Outward Bound of theatrical experience. Like Outward Bound, it has fare that ought to be offered, but not everyone may have the endurance for such a trip.

“ENDGAME”

By Samuel Beckett. Director, Scott Feldsher. Set, Robert Brill. Costumes, Randi S. Norman. Makeup, Frank Mondana. Sound, Marta Zekan. Stage manager, Elizabeth Walter. With Paul L. Nolan, Bruce McKenzie, Jake Schmidt Sr. and Helen Reed Lehman. At 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday, through June 25, at 1743 Fourth Ave., San Diego.