Synopsis

A timely revival of Beckett’s bleakly comic masterpiece. Four characters, spanning three generations, are all ‘locked down’ together facing death in a comfortless world. There’s Hamm, a grandee who can neither walk nor see, Clov, his servant who walks with difficulty and cannot sit, and Hamm’s elderly parents, Nagg and Nell, who are reduced to living in dustbins. Outside their room is no discernible life. But as Nell remarks, ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.’

This was Beckett’s favourite of his own plays. The Stage called it ‘masterful’ and the Hollywood Reporter referred to it as ‘an existential masterwork’. And as The Guardian asked in July 2020, ‘Is there a more fitting playwright for our current moment of isolation, uncertainty and endurance than Beckett?’