Will LeBow's Hamm is no whip-wielding Pozzo but, in his worn robe, slippers, and toque, a sort of frowsy aristocrat, alternately barking orders and exhibiting a Noël Coward-esque noblesse oblige, invoking his story in a terse yet plummy cadence that's both touching and absurd. And Thomas Derrah's Clov, boring his fingers into his cranium as if to jump-start an idea, his body twisted by a painful limp, somehow mixes brute exasperation with insouciant showmanship. As Nagg and Nell, Remo Airaldi and Karen MacDonald are as weighed down by fright wigs and old-age make-up as they are by the ashbin lids slammed down whenever their son orders them "bottled." Still, Airaldi conveys both the bitterness and the barbed wit of the "cursed progenitor." And MacDonald, earthy in her assertions about comedy, brings a profound piquancy to her Krapp-like recollection of boating and not-yet-atrophied romance. It's going against the nature of things to suggest Beckett would be happy. Suffice to say he would be satisfied.
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Theater
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, Noel Coward, Loeb Drama Center, Karen MacDonald, Samuel Beckett, Marcus Stern, Marcus Stern, Thomas Derrah, American Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Less
