Neverendgame

Samuel Beckett played and enjoyed cricket. He also won a Nobel Prize, but only for literature. There have long been rumours that in his youth he wrote a play about the sport. In recent astonishing news the lost play appears to have been found. In 1957 Beckett’s Endgame was first performed at London’s Royal Court theatre. When prize-winning renovations recently converted the old theatre into the Downton Mosque, the first English-tradition-themed mosque in the UK, some handwritten pages, signed “Sam wrote this”, were found under the lino in the gender-inconclusive first-floor lavatory. The assembled and carefully dramaturged text, titled Neverendgame, while clearly a juvenile and even derivative work, hints at the towering dramas and the sparkling ennui of Beckett’s mature years.

In Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company’s forthcoming star-studded production of the already famous text is eagerly being anticipated by our leading critics: “Brilliant juvenilia undermining Western orthodoxy despite white, male privileged authorship” (Helia Gass, ABC24); “A subversive play text that places cricket as the heart of darkness within twentieth-century drama” (TabascoMonk, Twitter); “I’m looking forward to a f****** grate nitey-nite out” (Monica Blyton-Furlough, Fairfax Media); “Sure to be a deeply moving experience, and a very dear young friend takes his shirt off” (Felix Querilish, Monthly).

Quadrant is privileged to have been permitted to publish extracts. Some ellipses in the text indicate cuts (some don’t).

 

* * *

 

SCENE: A country cricket ground. A tree. Evening. Stage left, a door—closed. Foreground stage right, two garbage bins, with lids on. A sound resembling the clash of astral bodies is heard, slightly in the background.

Two tramps in dirty cricket whites. HIMALON, sitting on a high mound, is trying to put on his left leg pad. He yanks at it with both hands, breathing heavily. He gives up. At the same time, in the shade of the leafless and barren tree, HAMM is knocking the second stump into the equally barren earth with a rock.

HIMALON: Nothing to be done.

HAMM: I’m beginning to come around to that opinion.

HIMALON: What are we doing here?

HAMM: We’ve come for the cricket. See, I’ve brought two stumps.

HIMALON: And the third?

[HAMM gives an enigmatic look wrapped in mystery, but does not answer. Pause.]

HIMALON: And the ball? Do you have a sphere wrapped in tight leather?

[There is the noise of nose blowing from one of the two bins.]

HIMALON: Hark! What’s that?

HAMM: Something is taking its course. [Pause.] Did your seeds spring up?

HIMALON: No.

HAMM: Did you manure them?

HIMALON: And compost.

[The sound from the bin is more earnest and resembles a dying sunset.]

HIMALON: Two stumps, only two stumps?

HAMM: It’s growing darker.

HIMALON: Like any other day. Like any other day, isn’t it?

HAMM: The daylight is falling. Uncertainty is upcoming.

HIMALON: What’s happening? What’s happening?

HAMM: Something is taking its course, again.

[A bin lid is thrust up and the head of KRAPP appears. It is not attractive. He wears a cricket pullover, a floppy hat and glasses with very thick green lenses.]

KRAPP: Is there syllabub still for tea?

HAMM: Accursed progenitor!

KRAPP: Me syllabub!

HAMM: Be silent, pater! The old folks at home! Guzzle, guzzle, that’s all they think about.

KRAPP: And the green sward? The syphilitic lilt of ball on willow.

HAMM: My childhood was devastated. I never had a third stump.

KRAPP: The thing was impossible.

HAMM: When there were still sports stores I wept to have a third stump.

KRAPP: The thing was impossible. [His head descends out of sight.] [HIMALON looks into the bin.]

HIMALON: Why’s he got a tape recorder down there? And a banana? No, he’s got two bananas, and a desk, with drawers. Why’s he got a tape recorder? And spools! Spooools! He’s talking.

KRAPP: [The voice echoes.] Slight improvement in bowel condition. Hhm … What? … Memorable. Equilibrium. Memorable equilibrium.

HIMALON: Why’s he here?

HAMM: He’s going to keep score.

HIMALON: He’s blind.

HAMM: It’s to our advantage.

…

KRAPP: [His head has re-emerged.] Memorable equilibrium.

HIMALON: Crap.

KRAPP: It’s spelt with a “K”—Krapp.

[Pause. The lid on the second bin rises and CATE is exhibited.]

HIMALON: Who [sic] she?

HAMM: Cate.

HIMALON: Kate?

CATE: It’s spelt with a “C”—Cate.

HIMALON: Is she on our team?

HAMM: She bats for the other side.

CATE: And bowls.

KRAPP: That’s another game.

CATE: Aye, how true. The game that dare not speak its name. Ask not for whom the wedding bell tolls, it tolls not for me.

HAMM: I always tear up at that part.

HIMALON: So why is she wearing a wedding dress?

HAMM: An anachronism. Pay no attention.

HIMALON: Hamm?

HAMM: It’s pronounced in the French manner. Jambon.

HIMALON: Jambon?

HAMM: Yes?

HIMALON: Why this farce? [Pause.]

KRAPP: I’ve lost me tooth.

CATE: Are you sure?

KRAPP: I had it yesterday.

CATE: Have they changed your sawdust?

KRAPP: It’s not sawdust. Be more specific.

CATE: Sand. Have they changed your sand?

KRAPP: At night I pray.

CATE: What do you pray?

KRAPP: Lord’s Prayer, of course. [He prays.] Long off, long-on, mid-on, deep mid-on, silly mid-on, short extra cover, third man, short third man and Philby who art in Hell, backward point, cover point, wicket-keeper, bowler, square leg and deep square leg, and keep us safe at night for the sake of those on the sea and in the air, and lost in deep fine leg, Amen.

ALL: Amen.

HIMALON: LBW.

HAMM: Not if it’s from outside leg stump.

HIMALON: Are you sure?

HAMM: It’s written in Wisden.

HIMALON: It’s getting dark. Are you sure they are coming?

HAMM: [Anguished.] We could always kill ourselves.

HIMALON: We could.

HAMM: Would the tree hold us?

HIMALON: It’s only a sapling. A dead sapling.

HAMM: If only your seeds had grown.

HIMALON: They were carrots.

HAMM: It’s not in Wisden.

KRAPP: If I had me tooth we could have tea.

CATE: [Elegiac.] If we had a teapot I could be mother. I’ve always wanted to be mother.

HIMALON: What did she say?

HAMM: She wants to be an other.

HIMALON: Another?

HAMM: An other. A reasonable request in the circumstances.

…

HAMM: What’s he doing?

HIMALON: He’s recording something.

KRAPP: [Calls out from deep inside the bin.] It’s me last tape.

HIMALON: He’s run out.

HAMM: Never was much good. Eye never on the ball.

HIMALON: He’s blind.

HAMM: No follow-through after delivery. No sweep. All forward defensive. Soft hands. The back-foot forcing shot was always beyond his means.

HIMALON: [The sun is setting, ominously.] Is there enough light, do you think?

HAMM: I’ve brought a torch. See, I’ve brought a torch to follow the ball.

HIMALON: And if the other side objects? Unfair advantage, stuff like that.

HAMM: Long leg, fast slip, and gully.

HIMALON: I never knew you were a superstitious man.

HAMM: God is love … tender mercies … new every morning … back in the field … April morning … face in the grass … nothing but the larks … pick it up.

HIMALON: The scene is dark. How can I pick it up? What larks? It’s June, not April. And we’ve still only got two stumps.

HAMM: Victory: “The side which has scored a total of runs in excess of that scored in the two completed innings of the opposing side shall win the match.”

HIMALON: Unoriginal, and anachronistic.

HAMM: “A forfeited innings is to count as a completed innings.”

HIMALON: Ditto.

HAMM: The lights are going out.

…

[Some pages of the text appear to be missing.]

…

[The lid of CATE’s bin reopens. Her head reappears, listlessly. She dribbles, sentimentally. She listens, deafly. She is observed by the other characters. From within her bin she withdraws a cricket bat.]

CATE: [The monologue is delivered with great rapidity and utter clarity.] Given the parameters as uttered forth in the perambulations of Wisden and Co of a preternatural umpire with white hat, winter stubble and supercilious glare of quad laid lateral equations, benign, be-eight, belittled on the P & O flying boat becalmed in Adriatic glasshouses quaquaquaqua brimming with Egyptian mutilated, morganic, arquebus riven barbaric cricketers at the boundary of Lord’s and Hades overwhelmed by the beer tent breasting, laden, Kershaw and Lawlor initialled editions, overburdened by tube stations on the Central Line side of the longer, livid pastelled batsman whose shadow rises under the chins of beflowered, composting, groundsmen seeking clarification of rule 21a as the dead ball rises, rises into the Velasquez feathered hat of the fieldsman propping Michelangelo at the boundary side of Etna over Kingsmartin raining methane flamboyant rivers upwards, forever as the first ball heralds the option of a pitch rolled in gold as the batsman’s gloves benighted, bejewelled, of the famous quarts [sic] within the crown absconds, fleetingly quaquaquaqua, despairing the horned capon of Lawlor’s last century, beaten by the drumming of teaspoons measuring life against the shinbones of bleached warriors beached for eternity on colonial highway 13 from Luang Prabang to Benares where stinking exposed intestines of silver sweated virgins extort an innings more from a rolling, dying, ever flying school of formally weighted balls, as specified in Law 5, placing the position of batter to bowled as foretold by mice on a pitch as sticky as ice dunes riven by vegan [sic] banquets as the Odeon overflows with the pretensions of conforming actors while clock ticking off side with wickets and fielder struck with beauty emanating from rebound ravished implements beyond stumps buried ’neath creases of protective equipment hidden from sight below apparel for whom the wicket-keeping pads, God given, God blessed [Mêlée, final vociferations] cricket … the bails … so finally claptivating [sic] … so P & O … beginning … maladjusted towards the end …

HIMALON: [Tears off her bride’s veil.] I think she’s finished.

[Silence. A doorbell rings. They all stare towards the door. The bell rings again, and again.]

HAMM: Enter.

[After a pause the door creaks open. There is nobody there.]

HIMALON: There is nobody there.

[A cough.]

HAMM: [Imperiously.] Come forward!

[A dwarf dressed as a cricket umpire appears in the doorway.]

HAMM: Well?

LITTLEMAN: Sir, Mr G. Odet is here.

VOICE FROM ABOVE: GODOT.

LITTLEMAN: Mr Godot and his gay merry country cricketers are here.

[Pause.]

HAMM: Ask them to come in.

 

CURTAIN.