A play by
Samuel Beckett, of
Waiting for Godot fame, which continues his
Theatre of the Absurd ideas. It takes place in a room with two windows, next to a kitchen that is "
ten feet, by ten feet, by ten feet..." There are four characters, none of whom ever leave the house. One character, named Clove, cannot bend his knees, and another, named Hamm, cannot see or walk, and never leaves his chair-on-wheels. The other two characters are Hamm's
parents, who live in separate
garbage cans. Clove spends his days serving Hamm, pushing his chair around, and reporting what he sees out the windows: "Nothing, nothing, and nothing". At the end, Clove prepares to leave the house, but the lights go to black as he is
standing at the door, so we never know.
It is probably best played towards the
humor side, as it does have some very funny lines, but it's the kind of humor that you laugh at, think about, and then feel guilty about laughing at them. For example: "At least we haven't lost our hearing!" "What?" the father (Nagg) to the mother (Nell), both extremely old, live off basically bread crumbs, and they live in garbage cans! If the production is played without trying to emphasize the humor, it gets very long, and very slow, and very boring; the humor is necessary for contrast to the remarkably depressing situation that all of these characters have been stuck in for a long time, and will most likely remain in until they die.