Laughter amid despair

If you want to see a virtuoso display of the art of acting, it is here. As the blind, chairbound Hamm in Samuel Beckett's study of four characters facing global and internal desolation, the great Michael Gambon acts everyone else off the stage with the sheer force of his voice and the eloquence of his spidery fingers.

Gambon's achievement is all the more notable as he is paired with comedian Lee Evans, who bends his clownish face and elastic limbs into the shape of Hamm's thwarted, crippled servant Clov. Let's hope that this bizarre but inspired double-act pulls the punters into Matthew Warchus's bold and more than usually funny production. After decades of relegation to our smaller theatres and studios, it feels odd to watch Endgame in a grand West End playhouse.

This was Beckett's favourite work, and his bleakest. Its vision of the last fragments of humanity, twitching their way towards oblivion after some unspecified apocalypse, lacks the smidgen of optimism that clings to his other plays. Hamm, Clov and Hamm's legless, dustbin-bound parents are held together by hatred and need rather than love or hope. They cling to their futile rituals and powerplays as their bodies fail and their biscuits and painkillers run out.

Previous productions I've seen have all been variations on a state of lowering depression, but Warchus has dared to do something different. He has injected a note of levity, almost larkiness, into Endgame by giving the characters Irish accents. An obvious move, perhaps, but it adds an element of showmanship to the ritualised despair, especially in the way Hamm alternates between autocratic commands and lachrymose pleas for affection.

Gambon's voice is now a roar, now an insidious caress, as the character exercises his ability to manipulate others' emotions, aware that it may be his last performance. Hamm is a bit of a ham, in other words. The play's knowing theatricality - "haven't you ever heard of an aside," thunders Gambon at one point - has never been more clear.

Where Gambon seems to inhabit Hamm, Evans is possessed by Clov. He limps and jolts around the stage, face contorted at the failure of his body, his memory, and his resolve to leave his master. Beckett, who loved Keaton and Chaplin, would surely have approved of the impotent, childish fury Evans expresses in routines that could have come straight from vaudeville.

The set, by Rob Howell, is a lofty room that looks like it suffered a dirty cell protest long ago, adorned only by those two infamous dustbins.

From one of these, Geoffrey Hutchings gives a rather overblown performance as Hamm's hated dad Nagg, but in the other, Royle Family star Liz Smith has surely found the part she was born to play. She is magnificent as Hamm's twittering, cooing mum Nell.

Mark Henderson's arctic lighting emphasises yet again the size of the theatre and the almost-bare stage. But it is stirring to see Gambon's Hamm spotlit and alone, to hear his voice roll around the hushed stalls, watched by Clov in the unbearable, touching final moments.

Evans, Warchus and Smith deserve high praise for making this a novel and challenging evening, neither the usual West End fare nor what we necessarily expect of Beckett. But by those same criteria, it is Gambon's night.

Booking to 1 May: box office 0870 060 6621.

Endgame