Show #20 "Endgame" at Tacoma Little Theatre

This genre they call "absurdist theatre" really messes with your mind.

You sit in your theater seat with several other brave and adventurous souls and look for anything that resembles a play. I think we saw one tonight...?

I searched for a plot. It really wasn't there.

I listened for a profound thought or moral to take home with me. If there was one, I missed it.

I waited for a twist ending. I later realized the entire play was twisted.

I tried to find sense in the whole thing. I was told, "no, this doesn't make any sense. It's absurdist theatre." Silly me.

So, without any theatrical conventions (or reasonable writing conventions, for that matter) to hang my hat on, my mind had to fill in the blanks. Boy, was my mind busy tonight!

I pondered whether playwright Samuel Beckett inspired Oscar the Grouch. I asked myself if the end of the world is appropriate fodder for a comedy. I wondered if "absurdity" was even related to "comedy."

I cringed when I saw how the lead actor reminded me of an old college boyfriend. I sighed as I discovered that the 3-legged stuffed dog on stage looked almost like "Rudy," my son's stuffed dog from his childhood.

So, with my head swirling in a tale of Rudy and my old college boyfriend facing the apocalypse on Sesame Street in a rather non-comedic fashion, it caused me to ponder the Big Question: how the heck did Beckett win the Nobel Prize for writing stuff like this?

Evidently, I am not an intellectual. I don't "get" absurdist theatre.

But I do "get" Oscar the Grouch. And the apocalypse. And Rudy.

But let's not mention that old college boyfriend, please........

Graphics courtesy of Tacoma Little Theatre