A Beleaguered Beckett?

AFTER WATCHING the feud over the American Repertory Theatre's unorthodox production of Samuel Beckett's "Endgame" almost turn into the First Amendment Superbowl of 1984, those actually making the trip to the Loeb Mainstage will more likely be bored than shocked.

The furor, if you remember, centered on the playwright's objection--based on third-hand reports--to the ART's change of locale from a bare room to a subway tunnel, the use of incidental music by Philip Glass, the large puddle at stage center, and what Beckett's agent called the purposeful casting of Black actors in two of the play's four roles.

The U.S. theatrical community was all prepared to take the stand to defend the rights of directors and producers to freely interpret a playwright's work. But fans of massive. First Amendment bloodfests were disappointed when Beckett's agents settled out-of-court for little more than a statement in the "Endgame" program.

Beckett, now living in semi-obscurity in Paris, sent in a short pronouncement for the program through his agent: "The American Repertory Theatre production which dismisses my directions is a complete parody of the play as conceived by me. Amybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this."

Beckett may be, as ART members protest, the greatest living playwright--my money's on Tom Stoppard--but he oversteps his artistic bounds when he insists that all productions of his minimalist angst orgy treat Beckett's radicalism as orthodoxy.

It is clear from watching Ben Halley Jr. and John Bottoms milk every metaphysical nugget of relevance out of this 1956 script that "Endgame" does not wear well in the postmodern and post-Cold War age. "Endgame," even more than the 1953 "Waiting for Godot," is a product of that decade, innovative for its time, but now hackneyed and cliched three decades after The Big Fear first osmotically seeped its way into the popular psyche.

The ART production, with its breathtaking subway set by Douglas Stein, appears more than anything else a valiant attempt to instill some life into what is essentially a theatrical museum piece. Director JoAnna Akalaitis has remained dutifully faithful to the script--down to Beckett's own mention of the Ritz cracker--even when the dialogue becomes an awkward partner to the massive visual impact of the subterranean set and Hamm and Clov garbed respectively as a Rastafarian and a grown-up street urchin.

The production takes the play out of its unreal "bare interior, grey light" and into a post-apocalyptic reality that manages to be much more effective and powerful than a 28-year-old musing on being and nothingness. The subway cars, the flickering overhead light, the crumbling walls and ceiling--they are all part of this, the post-industrial age. The set may be a product of the '80s, but it is as true to Beckett as he was to himself 30 years ago.

It is unlikely that a straight production of "Endgame" could fill a theater and keep its attention the way Akalaitis and Stein have managed to do. Akalaitis, who collaborated on this year's Talking Heads concert film, went so far as to say she would have refused to take on "Endgame" had she been restricted to a strict interpretation of the text.

She is right, Beckett et al would be well advised to note that even if the playwright's name is still be revered among the true believers, his work is not so timeless that it could not benefit from a quick boost by those who'd like to see Samuel Beckett become more than a Cold War artifact.