Theatre review: Endgame and Rough for Theatre II

The first sign that this revival of Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece is not going to be the landmark production its director Richard Jones would want it to be is immediate.

From the moment Daniel Radcliffe’s Clov hobbles on to the stage, memories of Lee Evans’s superb performance in the role opposite Michael Gambon in 2004 gatecrash this show like an unwanted ghost. And it never really goes away.

Radcliffe has proved his acting mettle since his Harry Potter days with a series of well-received stage and screen performances. But as the near-crippled slave to Alan Cumming’s blind and chair-bound Hamm, Radcliffe is still too boyish to convey the required depth of suffering demanded. From his atrophied ankles to the tussled crop of boy band hair, Radcliffe is innately more of a hero than a victim. He can’t help it.

Cumming also cannot help but be himself. Sat on his chair with his skeletal legs exposed to the bare walls of his cell-like room, his Hamm’s view of life as irredeemably absurd is inflected with theatrical flourishes. They are always funny. But they lower the stakes. So when he and Radcliffe take their smiley curtain call, there is none of the relief that should be felt when we return to our comfortable world. Why? It can only be because Radcliffe and Cumming never make us leave it.