Peterhouse Theatre
Directors: Kellie Hirsch / Millie Green
3 stars

Halfway through Beckett’s ‘Endgame’, the elderly mother of the wheelchair-bound, petulant Hamm exclaims that there is “nothing funnier than unhappiness.”

This Peterhouse production, directed by Kellie Hirsch and Millie Green, seems to take this statement as its starting point, producing a play that tightwalks the boundary between the tragic and the comic. Hirsch and Green’s direction has admirably attempted to bring these contradictory elements out in the members of the cast, and it is seen especially in Matthew Harris’s brilliant performance of the stiff, monosyllabic, manservant Clov.

Harris’s posture never slackened as he stamped across the stage, lifting ladders and pushing Hamm (Matthew Blackett) around, his furrowed brow and even voice both convincing and moving. Limited by the fact that he was i n an office chair rather than a wheel-chair, Blackett gave a commendable performance as the acerbic, aristocratic Hamm, though at times his energy seemed at discord with the supposedly lifeless character he was portraying, his flailing limbs contradicting his constant assertion that he couldn’t stand up.

Kellie Hirsch and Roisin Kiberd both gave good performances as the senile parents Nagg and Nell, and altogether it was obvious that this production had worked hard to achieve precision and the perfection a Beckett play so needs.

Emma Hogan