ABSTRACT
The visible bareness already makes a powerful impact, but Samuel Beckett increases it by building up the impression of an off-stage area that infinitely extends the bareness and emptiness and multiplies the opportunities for wandering freely that Estragon and Vladimir so terrifyingly have. In an earlier draft of Endgame Beckett pointed up the theme of generation by the grotesquely farcical device of having Clov appear in the disguise first of a woman and then of a boy. There is also something ludicrous and repellent about his total self-absorption, as Beckett suggests by making him a bit of a clown, with white face and purple nose, given to antics like slipping on a banana skin and looking up words in a huge, pantomime-style dictionary. A visually bold production is needed to realise Beckett’s directions and hints and make feel the ‘blazing light’ as the ‘hellish blaze’ it is for Winnie.
