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ENDGAME PREVIEW:

Shaking it up: Samuel Beckett’s Classic Endgame highlights Tremors Theatre Festival

Samuel Beckett classic Endgame an intimate affair. Cosy venue makes an exciting event for actors in Tremors festival production

By Sarah Berman, Vancouver, Sun April 4, 2012
vancouversun.com

Tremors Festival
April 10 to April 28
The Cultch and Little Mountain Studios
Tickets: from $15, go to tickets.thecultch.com or call 604 251-1363
Endgame
Little Mountain Studios, 26th and Main
April 18-28, 7 p.m.
Tickets: $15, go to tickets.thecultch.com or call 604 251-1363

VANCOUVER — Ryan Beil is ready for his close-up. As part of the Tremors contemporary theatre festival, Beil will help stage an exceptionally cosy performance of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame.

It bridges the gap into film and television when you shove it right in their face.

“There’s something to be said about putting theatre in a more intimate environment,” Beil says of Little Mountain Studios, the art gallery where Main Street Theatre has practised and performed since 2008. “It bridges the gap into film and television when you shove it right in their face.”

With just 50 seats, the venue guarantees a detailed view of the action. “I like to walk into a space as an audience member and not really know how it’s all going to work out,” says Beil, who has a background in improv and comedy.

Walking into Little Mountain there’s a strange atmosphere... it’s very exciting.

]“In a proper theatre you know exactly how it works. You’re a safe distance away, the lights are going to come down and you’re going to be there for a couple hours. Walking into Little Mountain there’s a strange atmosphere. People are crushed together and it’s very exciting.”

Beil plays the part of Clov, a servant who schleps from wall to wall, satisfying the futile whims of his master Hamm. Directed by Stephen Malloy and co-starring Sasa Brown, Josh Drebit, and Daryl King, the production flaunts a dark, humorous streak.

“Waiting for Godot gets done a lot more,” Beil says of the Beckett canon. “But I think Endgame is his best work.”

Endgame will also mark Little Mountain’s first theatre production as a legally zoned performance space. Functioning for many years as an underground artist collective, it has been transformed into a legitimate all-ages venue.

We’ve been lucky enough to garner an audience who aren’t traditional theatre-goers, just young people who happen to go see plays

“I was born and raised in Vancouver, so I went to Little Mountain for shows when it was called the Butcher Shop,” Beil says. “I remember the good old days.”

We’ve been lucky enough to garner an audience who aren’t traditional theatre-goers, just young people who happen to go see plays,

Through Little Mountain, Beil and his company have introduced their personal take on classics to a new generation of music, art and television fans. “We’ve been lucky enough to garner an audience who aren’t traditional theatre-goers, just young people who happen to go see plays,” says Beil.

 

REVIEW by

Fun! Fun! Vancouver!

Sunday, 22 April 2012

Endgame (at Little Mountain Gallery to April 28)

Well, this play sure fucked me up. 

Well, this play sure fucked me up. 

I'm not a fan of Samuel Beckett, after once trying to sit through a production of Waiting For Godot. So when I heard that Main Street Theatre was doing a Beckett play, I was highly skeptical. However, I had heard so many good things about Main Street Theatre and the tiny space that is the Little Mountain Gallery, that I just HAD to go. 

everything...about this production was simply brilliant. The staging was phenomenal, and the acting was just incredible.

And boy am I glad I did! The play is called Endgame, and yeah, I totally did not get its meaning, and I definitely need to Wikipedia the shit out of it in a bit, but everything else about this production was simply brilliant. The staging was phenomenal, and the acting was just incredible. It was creepy and captivating. The space felt like we were in some post-apocalyptic bunker with the last four remaining humans on Earth. We had Hamm, a wheelchair-bound blind guy who ordered around his helper/slave Clov, who dutifully carries out his wishes. They are joined by Hamm's legless parents, Nagg and Nell. Obviously you can see why this play messed with my mind and I need to come down from the sci-fi freakiness of it all. 

I was literally on the edge of my seat

This was the scariest thing I've ever seen in live theatre. I was literally on the edge of my seat, because I was terrified! This is one of the two shows that will be rounding out the Tremors Festival this week, so hurry and get a ticket before it's all over! It's definitely an exciting time in Vancouver's indie theatre scene this month!

More at: funfunvancouver

Endgame delivers shabby apocalypse
BY JERRY WASSERMAN, SPECIAL TO THE PROVINCE APRIL 23, 2012

“There’s nothing funnier than unhappiness,” says Nell, poking her head out of a garbage can in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. There’s an awful lot of unhappiness in Beckett’s absurd scenario of humankind at the end of days. Main Street Theatre’s production of the play for the Tremors Festival also finds some of the fun in it, but don’t expect belly laughs.

Clov has to stoop to keep from bumping his head on the ceiling and hardly has room to wheel Hamm around his tiny domain.

Apocalypse has never looked shabbier than in the claustrophobic confines of Little Mountain Gallery, the weary storefront just off Main Street where this company has staged dynamic productions of David Mamet and Sam Shepard over the past few years. Director/designer Stephen Malloy has built a high platform on which blind, wheelchair-bound Hamm and his reluctant servant Clov play out their final hours in what might be a bomb shelter. Clov has to stoop to keep from bumping his head on the ceiling and hardly has room to wheel Hamm around his tiny domain.

“Something is taking its course,” remarks Clov. That something, in Beckett’s grim existential vision, might just be life. (It might also be radiation poisoning, the play having premiered in 1957 at the height of the Cold War.) Just as in Waiting for Godot, no saviour is coming to the rescue: “You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that.”

Hamm keeps his dying parents, Nagg and Nell, in garbage cans, an apt metaphor for the indignities of age. Crippled Hamm himself regularly asks Clov for painkiller. But there’s none of that, either.

There is, though, memory (“Ah, yesterday,” Nell sighs), the need for company, and the compulsion to self-justify. Hamm keeps telling a story about his generosity in agreeing to take in the young Clov. But Hamm’s life has been all about egotism, not altruism. And in the end does it really matter? Death may be terrifying but it will come as a relief. “When I fall,” says Clov, “I’ll weep for happiness.”

Sasa Brown’s breathy, gasping Nell is heartbreaking.

Ryan Beil is very good as Clov, mechanically deadpan except when the bitterness he barely holds in check sporadically explodes. Though Beil is the company’s primo comedian, Josh Drebit’s Hamm has most of the funny stuff, commenting on the quality of his own storytelling in nicely understated asides. But Hamm is also a ham, and Drebit’s performance is so contained that we miss the fun his pomposity ought to provide. Alongside Daryl King’s incessantly angry Nagg, Sasa Brown’s breathy, gasping Nell is heartbreaking.

If the Canucks’ season ended earlier than you hoped, seeing how this game ends might put that in perspective.

Where: Little Mountain Gallery, 195 E. 26th Ave.
When: To April 28
Tickets: $15 at 604-251-1363 or www.tickets.thecultch.com