Endgame/Rough - Old Vic

There's a front row £10 PwC ticket for tonight if somebody wants to get in there quick.

Really interested in what people think about this...would have a slot for this on my next trip, but this sounds so terrible...don't know if I really want to sit through this.

I'm there on Wednesday

Oh come on guys, Endgame has one of the funniest exchange in theatre history

I’m going to see this on February 15th - got a cheap (ish) stalls ticket but it’s still a long way back from the front, but apart from the aforementioned PWC tickets, I haven’t seen any bargains (mine was £20 off the RRP, I’ll have to make do with that bargains wise, I wanted to go out on my lonesome on the Valentines weekend and this looked an easy fit for ‘unromantic day out’ - I went to see Cyprus Avenue on St V’s last year which might give you an inkling of what an old romantic I am 😂)

First preview last night - thought this was OK but suffered from an audience laughing hysterically at absolutely anything. Cumming was good but bordering on the tolerable side of hammy. Radcliffe was... fine but quite stiff.

Rough for Theatre II is 25 mins and was quite fun with Cumming in his element. Then there's a (very noisy!) interval before Endgame. A bit of breaking the fourth wall. Finished at 9:50 last night but started late so that will be earlier as time goes on I imagine.

Warning for those sat in the circles on the right hand side as I was, your view will be obscured for a couple of moments but not enough to spoil your enjoyment and you can gather what is happening anyway. Not sure if its the same case on the other side.

So like the entire audience when Bette Midler did Hello Dolly on Broadway...

I got the middle of row M in the stalls. Great view but I'm glad I didn't pay more than 25 squid.

Its an early preview but I can't thinking Ive seen Beckett performed better... Richard Jones doesn't use his usual tricks and it all seems lacking.

Cumming rushed many of his lines in Rough Theatre and if you are a fan of Jane Horrocks, blink and you'll miss her.

In the end I did enjoy Endgame as it is a great play.

This wasn't for me and I should've known but it's hard to resist £10 tickets.

I thought the first part was unnecessary. I would rather not "waste" 25 mins plus 20 mins break on it. Endgame was well played all around it's just not my kind of a play. Not the sort of doom I want on a miserable January day.

The chap next to me fell asleep. My partner didn't like it at all and asked me never to book Becket again.

I was already feeling a little blue and now I woke with a stinking bad mood and I yet to tell my partner next week's theatre In the NT will be 4 hours long.😭😭😭

Who's playing thanos in this one?

I LOVED Endgame last night, and was glad to see Rough for Theatre 2 as a curio. Karl Johnson is the height and humanity of "Endgame," being the human entree to appreciating the gallows humour of the show, with the deliberately and deliciously camp Cumming also dead funny (well, wishing he were dead, lol) as the Hamm the ham, hamming it selfishly and atrociously in his little world in the endgame of his life!

Some spoilers follow. . .

"Rough for Theatre 2" is about a couple of bureaucratic angels, like the Starkeeper in Carousel, assessing the life of a man about to commit suicide. The best thing about this short 25 minute play, which starts the evening, is Cumming's character's pathetic neediness for Radcliffe's more professional and dominant character. That's funny, but the existential stuff is covered better in other plays by the same author, in my opinion. An interesting curio.

3 stars.

"Endgame" is a tour de force for Karl Johnson! He's lifted everything you've ever seen him in, for example, from providing the spectacle of the NT's "Frankenstein" with it's beating heart as the blind man, to playing the heartbreaking lovable old git of a father-in-law, in the sitcom, "Mum."

And here he is this play's soul, whether he's tending to his wife in the bin next to him, or aching for a biscuit. In an existential play, he exists in the most relatable way: he exists hard lol! He's our in, because everyone else in the play is a bit horrible, or in Cumming's Hamm's case, monstrous.

In fact, this whole play is like an evil precursor to the TV sitcom "Mum", in which Lesley Manville's titular Mum is also in the endgame of her life, her whole life reduced to an everyday routine of vacantly and good-naturedly listening to other people rabbit on vapidly.

In that sitcom, as here, Karl Johnson rabbits on while caring for his even more ailing wife, and for fans of "Mum," once you feel the parallels, you might warm up to this play, even if you think you don't like Beckett.

As Jane Horrocks' blink-and-you-ll-miss-her Nell says, "nothing is funnier than unhappiness," and that is the key to the gallows humour of both "Mum" and this play, as the characters in both wrestle with the endless inanity, boredom, repetition and futility of everyday existence.

Of course, Hamm, the central character here, is the opposite of the self-effacing "Mum." A preening drama queen in a world with no drama, with useless legs and useless eyes, he has only old stories and old cruelties to fall back on to keep himself going. With increasingly precise comic timing, Cumming effortlessly embodies this drama queen, a monster, yet a pathetic one, needy and desperate for attention from the only able-bodied person in his orbit, Daniel Radcliffe's Clov.

The double act of Cumming and Radcliffe works well because it hits the wheelhouse of both actors, with Cumming's camp cruelty, slyness and neediness meshing and clashing perfectly and thoroughly with Radcliffe's workhorse decency and earnestness. Watching Radcliffe dutifully suffer in Cumming's orbit, in a world where he has to constantly climb ladders to reach pointlessly high windows, is funny precisely because he takes it so well lol!

This is peak gallows humour, and it worked for me, because Karl Johnson provided the human connection I needed!

4 and a half stars.

Saw it last night from a mid stalls PwC seat and...meh. The first play felt pointless, while Endgame started off well with absurdist funny moments but then it all got so flat and boring... Cumming was great but his monologues were confusing and made Karl Johnson`s character almost fall asleep - for a reason! Radcliffe's acting was one note - a good one, but you cannot develop a character or push the play forward with an acting that doesn't have some range...

3 stars - go see if you feel like, but it's not unmissable.