ENDSPIEL

With “ENDSPIEL,” the Schauspiel Köln brings Samuel Beckett’s world-famous play to the stage of the Kleines Haus. At the center are Hamm and Clov, an unlikely pair at the end of time: one is blind and cannot walk; the other can see but cannot sit.

Dependent on one another, they observe a deserted outside world, pass the time with verbal sparring, and revolve around nothing less than the incomprehensibility of human existence. Beckett’s classic of the theater of the absurd combines bitter wit, clownish moments, and great existential depth.

In Kay Voges’ production, Lum and Purl from Wolfram Lotz’s *Some Messages to the Universe* take on the struggle with nothingness and appear as spiritual counterparts to Hamm and Clov. The result is a theatrical evening that is less about explanation and more about experience: absurd, humorous, dark, and at the same time full of poetic power.