Get Out: Samuel Beckett's Endgame @ Stone Soup

It's been said that Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot was a play in which all that was left to the characters was hope; if that's the case, then Endgame is what you get when you lose even that.

In one long act, the play features a cast of four characters in increasing states of immobility and decrepitude, the last dismal dregs of humanity gasping their final breaths, telling incoherent stories and hoping for a bitter end they're too afraid to hasten.

But for the bleak philosophy behind the play, it's also perhaps Beckett's funniest. He was, after all, one of the greatest 20th century comics, a fact that's all too often overlooked or downplayed in the lit-crit courses where most people are exposed to his work. If life is misery, then misery's funny (the play's most famous line is "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I'll grant you that."); Beckett's plays plumb the depths of meaninglessness, relentlessly revealing how miserable and pointless human endeavor is in the grand scheme of things, while simultaneously liberating us from despair with a dark gallows humor that begs us not to take ourselves so seriously.

Beckett's one of those writers who seems to be rarely produced by theatres on the grounds that they assume his shows are produced too often. So grab hold of the opportunity: Two Hours Traffic's production of Endgame opens tonight at Stone Soup Theatre in Wallingford.

"Endgame" @ Stone Soup Theatre // Fri & Sat @ 8, Sun @ 2, thru Dec. 2 // $10-$30