Beckett is worth the waiting game...

The play, an adaptation from the works of Samuel Beckett, begins with this setting:

A stark, spare stage, a few props. At center, a tree, nearly leafless, a sign of late autumn; an animal shelter in a corner, hay scattered; a gravestone, in need of care; a stretch of beach, sandy and stoned; a room, perhaps a kitchen, visible. There is the sound of surf, sometimes comforting, always unforgiving.

A nameless man appears, unkempt, worn baggy coat, eyes wild, wondering and wary—he later admits to be “mad, but harmless” — the wandering Beckett vagabond of “Waiting for Godot,” preparing himself for another day of survival and taking stock. We’re curious. He notices. He talks to us at once.

For 80 minutes, in a revival of Vincent and the late Chris O’Neill’s storied “Endwords” — first presented back in 1990 in the early years of the Irish Classical Theatre Company and now brought back by Dan Shanahan’s inventive Torn Space Theater — the tattered protagonist talks about his life, still searching for meaning in the rubble of his days, finding little reason to go on but displaying a bit of hope for an explanation or direction, mundane distractions helping to pass the time. It’s still a waiting game.

The O’Neill brothers have gleaned frustration and disillusionment from Beckett’s desperate writings and paralleled them with the recurrent themes of birth and death and the many life obstacles that apparently haunt our tramp friend; lost loves — the lonely Lulu — and the concern with aging — pain, particularly — much like those remembered in “Krapp’s Last Tape,” occupy much of the play’s reverie. Through it all, the Beckett message is driven home: life has no meaning except

the circumstances we have created for ourselves.

David Oliver is the lone actor here, and he is remarkable, rambling, ranting, falling down, getting up, moving on, vaudevillian at times, funny and insightful but ultimately sad and pathetic in his seeking meaning and truth at every turn.

Two years ago, Oliver was a mesmerizing and puzzling Clov in the Irish Classical/Torn Space production of Beckett’s masterful “Endgame,” and he has emerged as a brilliant interpreter of the Irish-born absurdist poet and novelist. Vincent O’Neill, who directs “Endwords,” is a Beckett scholar, as was his still-lamented brother, Chris. We have incredible talent in our midst.

“Endwords” is repetitive and seems prolonged even in brevity. It’s occasionally bleak and maybe even “distraught,” as one British critic called Beckett’s words. But the old man said that audiences had to decide if that’s true. Two of Buffalo’s finest acting companies have presented us the opportunity to do just that.

Theater Review

“Endwords”

3 1/2 stars