Changing the Rules of ‘Endgame’ Gives Edge to Bleak Comedy

Samuel Beckett was very particular about the staging of his plays. When JoAnne Akalaitis directed a revival of “Endgame” at Harvard a dozen years ago and set the play in a New York subway car, Beckett threatened legal action to close it down.

“Any production which ignores my stage directions,” he asserted, “is completely unacceptable to me.”

What, then, would he have thought of Joel T. Cotter’s “Endgame,” which has opened at the Alternative Repertory Theatre? Many of its best touches defy Beckett’s explicit instructions or reinvent them, adding wholly unexpected details.

When the play begins, Clov (Arilyn Carpenter) enters in drab overalls and a red construction helmet, croaking a tuneless version of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” between eruptions of a hacking cough. The script suggests no tune at all, let alone a bright Rodgers and Hammerstein song from “Oklahoma!”

But it is clear from that moment on that Cotter intends to draw as much gallows humor as possible from the desperate ironies pervading Beckett’s bleak comedy of existential resignation.

Many directors tend to ignore this aspect of “Endgame,” choosing to draw out its pregnant ambiguities so as to highlight its enigmatic pronouncements.

The result is that audiences often are subjected to a forced march through a land of unrelieved tedium.

Cotter recognizes that the inherent gloom of Beckett’s dyspeptic vision is essentially comic and that the gray nimbus suffusing the characters in “Endgame” need not be presented with a humorless--ergo, tragic--glow. He realizes, moreover, that the tensile strength of the play carries its own weight without having to be trussed up by high (or low) seriousness.

And in Dennis McLernon, who plays Clov’s master, Hamm--a blind, petty, physically depleted tyrant who is helpless without his servant--Cotter has an actor able to bring all of this to life in a confident, animated performance full of comic details.

McLernon’s unusually energetic portrayal does not compromise the sacrosanct spirit of the role--Hamm’s alienation, fickleness and self-pity remain--but the actor does offer a strikingly vivid Hamm who lives up to his name even though he is consigned to a chair on casters.

A play of paradoxical beginnings and endings reminiscent of “Waiting for Godot,” “Endgame” hangs even more than “Godot” on a condition rather than a plot: Will Hamm drive Clov out of his apartment with his imperious demands? Will Clov go, as she continually threatens, or stay?

The contradictions of their existence are echoed in their lines. Clov’s first words are: “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.” Hamm begins: “Me to play. Old stancher! Can there be misery loftier than mine?”

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Cotter’s changes make imaginative use of the production’s limited space. When Clov rummages noisily in what is supposed to be her kitchen, it is more like a storage closet filled with pots and pans. They clang as she brushes by, making euphonious Cage-like music out of random dissonance--an apt domestic nuance also not indicated in the script.

Another adroit piece of direction and design is the ingenious use of two old television monitors that not only dress the motley atmosphere of Hamm’s dilapidated underground apartment but also serve as a stage within a stage to dramatize the situation of Hamm’s elderly father and mother, Nagg and Nell, who live in separate garbage cans.

Instead of sitting in the cans on stage, they are seen on videotape as though living in a cellar beneath the cans. So when Clov takes the lid off at feeding time, there is a wonderful trompe l’oeil impression: Clov ducks headfirst into a can and lowers food on a string, which suddenly becomes visible dangling above both Nagg and Nell on the monitor.

The multimedia staging works beautifully as a visual device to save space while also suggesting a captive environment to greater effect than simply having Nagg and Nell make talking-head appearances from the cans proper.

The most obvious change--making Clov a woman instead of a man--is less defensible. But it does offer the chance to cut the size of the cast in half.

And it provides each of the actors with an added challenge. McLernon and Carpenter double on tape--McLernon as Nell and Carpenter as Nagg--in cross-gender performances underscoring the symmetry that Beckett clearly wants us to perceive in their symbiotic relationships.

Carpenter’s inexperience is evident in her portrayal of Clov. But with McLernon as the main focus of attention at stage center, this “Endgame” can be enjoyed--yes, Virginia, all in all this is an entertaining production.

Beckett might not have approved, given his notorious inclination to disregard the audience. But I don’t think he’s turning in his grave. “Endgame” does not overplay its hand.

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Dennis McLernon: Hamm/Nell

Arilyn Carpenter: Clov/Nagg

An Alternative Repertory Theatre production, directed by Joel T. Cotter. Scenic design: Todd Muffatti. Costume and video design: Gary Christensen. Lighting design: David C. Palmer. Sound design: Shane Cadman. Stage manager: Michael Cox.

* What: “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett.

* When: Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., through April 13. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes (no intermission).

* Where: Alternative Repertory Theatre, 1636 S. Grand Ave., Santa Ana.

* Whereabouts: Take the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway to the Edinger exit, head west to South Grand Avenue and turn left. The theater will be on the right.

* Wherewithal: $16.

* Where to call: (714) 836-7929.