Endgame (play) Gascoyne starred in a staging of the play at both the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and HOME in Manchester. Endgame (play) Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters. It was originally written in French (entitled "Fin de partie"); Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the Royal Court Theatre in London, opening on 3 April 1957. It is commonly considered, along with such works as "Waiting for Godot", to be among Beckett's best works. The play was premiered on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre,
Samuel Beckett Days" (1961). These plays—which are often considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been instrumental in the so-called "Theatre of the Absurd"—deal in a darkly humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers. The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin in a book of the same name; Beckett and "Godot" were centerpieces of the book. Esslin argued these plays were the fulfilment of Albert Camus's concept of "the absurd"; this is one reason Beckett is often falsely labeled as an existentialist (this is based on the assumption that Camus was an existentialist,