10/02/2026
Many thanks to Alaina Johns at Broad Street Review for joining us for the final show of Samuel Beckett's Endgame at Theatre Exile. News about IRC productions and events for Spring 2027 coming soon, via email and right here.
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
“Endgame perfects the unity of form and content: four survivors of an unknown catastrophe—a man who can’t sit down, a man who can’t stand up, and two amputees in trash cans—perform an endless cycle of meaningless rituals as they await the end.” Endgame was my favorite Beckett back when I was getting my theater degree, so I want to catch this show by the consistently fine Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium.
MY REVIEW: You can call me a philistine, but Beckett and some of the other absurdist masters are always a hard sit for me. I try to take some in every once in awhile, though, so I don’t become too baked in my own preferences. In the case of this production, I’m glad I went.
As director Tina Ann Brock says in her playbill note, wondering what Beckett would be writing if he was alive today, “What words and filled silences could he possibly find for his characters to illustrate the existential peril of the current moment?” This play about a strange family in some kind of post-apocalyptic bunker does hit a bit different in America in 2026, and some of the lines take on even sharper meaning. Even if you struggle with Beckett, there are plenty of arresting flares of language and character to enjoy in this play, plus dark laughs.
Tydell Williams’s lights conspire with set designer Erica Hoelscher’s boxy basement to create constantly absorbing textures out of faux concrete (Hoelscher, Brock, and Bob Schmidt are all credited with the set painting), and when the lights dim, they draw us soberly in.
Brock and Schmidt play the piteously funny Nell and Nagg. David Bardeen brings gravelly, lugubrious savor to Hamm, and John Zak, his face powdered white, brings ghoulish glee and sadness to their mysterious butler Clov. Each gives a wonderful physical performance (especially notable for the three almost totally stationary characters), from Zak scaling a ladder with his bad leg to fingers creeping out from a trashcan lid.
It’s worth noting how many hats Brock is wearing at IRC: an artistic director who regularly acts and directs, and has design and construction credits as well (here, costumes, painting, and props, with Hoelscher and Schmidt). She’s the marketing/PR director and on the board of directors, too. Sometimes it spells trouble when one person wears too many hats, even in nonprofit life where it’s usually inevitable, but she’s a true artist at every level, and her passion and talent are instrumental to IRC.
Broad Street Review's Entire Recap of Reviews from FringeArts 2026, below:
See where editor Alaina Johns is heading in this year’s Fringe and get her recommendations with mini-reviews that will be updated right here throughout…
