“You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that!” The sentiment, bellowed by Hamm to his servant Clov in the Druid Theatre’s revival of Samuel Beckett’s postapocalyptic Endgame, is freshly relatable to a U.S. audience. Under Garry Hynes’s direction, this Endgame is full of laughs—both she and the ensemble fully grasp the idea expressed by Hamm’s trash-bin-residing mother, Nell, that “nothing is funnier than unhappiness”—but it achieves this tone by leaning into, rather than shying away from, the play’s relentless bleakness.
