Hamm calling the set his 'shelter' probably prompted the choice of a New York subway tunnel as the setting for an American repertory company's production of 'Endgame' in 1984. Beckett took exception to such an interpretation but, being unable to prevent the presentation, insisted on the publication of a programme note to disown the production, concluding that 'anybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this'.

A bare interior is all we are offered. 'There's nowhere else,' Clov insists (though Hamm thinks he exaggerates). With Hamm being blind and the impossibly high windows preventing the audience from seeing any exterior, it is given to Clov to clamber up a ladder and report seeing nothing beyond but an empty, dead, post-apocalyptic world of spectral 'grey' (or 'light black' rather). Has the end of the world come?

Hamm: I once knew a madman who thought the end of the world had come. He was a painter - and engraver. I had a great fondness for him. I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I'd take him by the hand and drag him to the window. Look! There! All that rising corn! And there! Look! The sails of the herring fleet! All that loveliness! [Pause.] He'd snatch away his hand and go back into his corner. Appalled. All he had seen was ashes. [Pause.] He alone had been spared. [Pause.] Forgotten. [Pause.] It appears the case is ... was not so ... so unusual.

The loveliness of the cornfield or that of bonny Mother Pegg that Hamm once loved are realities now long lost in the past. Such insanity of vision as was suffered by the painter is now not so unusual, such being the reality that now appals Hamm.

Clov paints a picture of the earth, sea and all rational life having been reduced to 'zero, zero and zero'. Any artistic beauty or craft that existed once is no longer represented; even the wall picture within the set has no purpose now.

'Outside of here it's death,' concludes Hamm. Beyond is 'the other hell' to the one he suffers within his own mind and being. He (and we) find attention confined to the stage-space of Hamm's present destitute existence.

Physical decay has invaded Hamm's world. Blind and immobile, he must endure an existence where there is no more pap or pain-killer, no more bicycle wheels or bicycles, Turkish Delight or sugar-plums. The kitchen, too, is practically empty. How long can he endure?

In his minimalist approach, Beckett has stripped the setting of everything that might distract attention from Hamm's decaying existence. So there, dominating stage-centre, the focus of all attention, Hamm can only sit and endure the present moment, wrapped in his thought. The stage-space becomes the skull-space of Hamm's cerebral world. What need to look for symbols within the play when the play itself is a metaphor?