Endgame
Infinithéâtre transformed Old Montréal’s immense abandoned Darling Foundry into a performance venue to present a bilingual (unauthorized by the Beckett estate) production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame/Fin de partie. We intercut Beckett’s French and English versions into one running version. -Very Montreal. Oct/Nov in1999 was a frigid autumn. (Also very Montreal!) With no heating in the empty former boiler factory, if you look at the YouTube video capture you can see the actors’ breath as they speak. We had to hand out blankets to the audience and they huddled together to keep warm. (See Charlebois’ review for description of venue/audience.)
The production was subsequently remounted at the Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre, where Québec and Canada were represented for the first time through Infinithéâtre.
Featuring Jean Archambault as "Hamm", Sean Devine as "Clove", Carolyn Guillet as "Nell", and Mark Gélinas as "Nagg".
Kelly Nestruck, now the Globe & Mail theatre “critic”, saw the original production in the abandoned Darling Foundry. Here is what he remembered nearly a decade later, February 4th, 2009, in the Guardian newspaper:
“…a bilingual production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame/Fin de partie that Montreal’s Infinitheatre presented in an abandoned foundry in the particularly cold autumn of 1999. Huddled under a blanket with a friend in below freezing temperatures in that unheated space, Hamm and Clov’s misery struck me more viscerally than at other productions which had paradoxically, left me cold. In fact that Endgame/Fin de partie, directed by Guy Sprung remains my favourite Beckett experience.”
Carolyn Guillet and myself as Nell and Nagg in Cairo. I had to replace Mark Gélinas for the tour due to his illness.
Carolyn and Mark in the original production. Frail as he was at the time, he still braved the below zero temperatures of the old boiler factory.
Jean Archambault and Sean Devine in the original Darling Foundry production. Unique theatre.
Review’s
-
Review
Gaëtan L Charlebois wrote a review in the Hour Magazine commenting on the bilingual interweaving of the French and English versions of the play. Executive summary? He was watching “great” theatre. Gaëtan among his other achievements, was responsible for initiating a very important online Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre in the 1990’s, hélas not up to date any more.