A review by arcyeus
Endgame by Samuel Beckett

3.0

Its very difficult to discuss what is actually ‘nothing’. Beckett’s plays make good bedtime reads yet I think there’s some flow to it. Why is there a flow? Think about the conversations of everyday folk. It’s probably exacerbated in Singapore because government and society are not welcoming towards arts and culture to say the least. Singaporeans are homogenised to increase efficiency and a lot of us are very dull. Most of the older generation also don’t have time to consider the sheer meaningless of existence or their ordinary conversations (whether ‘intellectual’ conversations have any meaning in of itself is another topic entirely). Those distant relatives that meet yearly at Chinese New Year to talk about kids, tuition centres, gossip about other relatives, tales are repeated to oblivion, distorted, recited with increasing vigour, and the cycle repeats precisely on the same date (in the lunar calendar). It may actually be more dull and ‘meaningless’ than the dialogue in Beckett’s plays. Beckett reverberates in our everyday lives and its both horrifying to think about and also why I will not love him though he is a master at his craft I am led to believe.