Andrew Upton manages to make Beckett his own in this darkly comic take on the apocalypse.

Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay, Sydney
April 7, 2015

Despite the notoriously litigious and megalomaniacal influence of Samuel Beckett (even posthumously thanks to the ardency of his executors), the enduring attraction of his visceral genius has ensured that directors have continually braved the rigidly insistent semiotics of Endgame for almost 60 years. Beckett is unequivocal about the significance and execution of almost every action, prop, costume and set detail, lacing-up a creative straightjacket that leaves very little wiggle room for innovation or reinvention. It’s a play, in a poetically apt way, which can seem doomed to exist ad infinitum as a monotonous repeat of its original 1958 staging.

With such fixed parameters, the burden of responsibility for injecting some noticeable individuality into any iteration falls to the ineffable nuance of the actors’ delivery, which lay safely beyond the “dead controlling hand” as Neil Armfield once labelled it, of Samuel Beckett and his exacting instructions. Fortunately Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Andrew Upton and his deftly assembled cast, led by Hugo Weaving, have achieved an...