This production of Samuel Beckett's mysterious, Endgame marks the end of one of the most innovative fringe companies in Portland. Every day vulgarizes one's hostility, and turns anger into irritation and petulance. With few resources and less funding, the company has consistently produced interesting work. It's true that the young members' reach occasionally exceeded their grasp, but no one could doubt their sincerity, devotion and talent. Yet they leave on a high note, as Sean Doran's production of Endgame is, in many ways, the Other Side's most mature work.
Life's a butcher's theater.
We're thrown on stage to drag a cross of meat and bone until a promised curtain drops. Our task is to learn how to carry the cross, which hourly grows fat on pain and futility. But in the crack of doom that never widens, we learn to endure. And if we're lucky, we might find some grandeur amidst the trash and trivia, the sickroom stench that only suicide can cut. In a house by a dead sea, blind and crippled Hamm sits in a battered armchair.