“What have I got to keep me here?” asks put-upon servant Clov in Samuel Beckett’s classic tragicomedy Endgame. “The dialogue,” is the decrepit Hamm’s telling response.

Indeed, remaining faithful to Beckett’s original vision, the Emporium Rep’s production was often hard-going and unceasingly bleak. With a cast of grotesque characters writhing in the hell of each other, somehow the sparkling wit of the playwright’s brutally funny script shone through.

Living in the aftermath of some apocalypse or another, Mike Goodenough as the monstrous scrapheap king Hamm looked more Mad Max than Important Actor, though a domineering performance was mesmerising throughout.

Likewise, Duncan Drury’s Clov channelled just the right level of wretched resentment towards his disabled and disabling master, the two bouncing off each other wonderfully.

The Emporium itself was a derelict church and then a squat before its current incarnation. This shall-we-say “rustic” interior fitted perfectly with Gary Blair’s sparse set design and James Weisz’s deliberately disjointed direction: a superficially grim and neatly expressive creative space allowed the performances to flourish.

In the capable hands of this talented new company, Endgame skilfully showcased the caustic insight that makes Beckett’s absurdist works as good as they are.