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Theatre & Drama
Review: Waiting for Godot
Fantasy foursome tours Beckett's impenetrable masterpiece
You can picture it – director Sean Mathias in his pyjamas with a cup of cocoa, flicking through Spotlight’s slender International Megastars section one night and saying, “Mmm ... what if ...” “Nah”, then turning over to dream some more.
But it came true – four British acting giants are on the road, making history and making as much sense as you would ever wish of the mystery that is Godot.
It’s hard to describe the pleasure of watching masterly practitioners at work and entirely in their element, but Mathias’s cast is theatrical crème de la crème: Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are inseparably affectionate as Estragon and Vladimir keeping their regular evening rendezvous; Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup give flesh to Pozzo and Lucky, once joined at the hip, now only roped together.
What’s it about? Well, two elderly men, clearly performers, probably a double act, discuss life and its meaning while they wait for Godot beside a tree – starkly bare in Act 1, covered in leaves (well, a few) in Act 2. Godot doesn’t come. Instead, the lugubrious and domineering Pozzo appears, towed on stage by his long-suffering companion Lucky, who he forces through a sequence of humiliating duties. Pozzo engages the old men in conversation, and demands feedback of his performance.
McKellen’s Estragon is riveting, and when he and Stewart are together the play and its ideas hum along – their fond interdependence climaxes in the scene where they juggle their bowler hats. Callow has the fruity voice for the self-absorbed and insecure Pozzo, but what produces rightful spontaneous applause is Ronald Pickup’s wild Joycean outburst near the end of Act 1.
Designer Stephen Brimson Lewis has built a set more elaborate than Beckett calls for in the original text. His grey ruin of a proscenium theatre, with the central tree growing through the wrecked floorboards of the stage, firmly fixes Estragon’s and Vladimir’s theatrical background.
Who is Godot? God? A goatherd? Their agent, perhaps, coming to tell them what their next job is? Who knows? The text and ideas are often repetitive, but you perceive the play is about familiar human anxieties: getting on together, and the fear of loneliness. It’s said Beckett wrote it to cheer himself up after his novels became gloomy. We may not fully understand his profound message, but, as he will have intended, because we are human, we make our own profound sense of it.
Do whatever it takes to get a ticket for this show. You won’t forget it, and you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren bedtime stories about four old boys who wowed the nation.
Bill Bingham, March 2009.
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Latest comments
Barbara Mountjoy
Tue 7 April 2009, 23:04
Saw the play in Bath last week. Amazing to watrch craftsmen at work - an acting masterclass and full of enjoyment - I was warned it would be gloomy.
Looking forward to seeing it again in London!
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Robert Tully
Fri 10 April 2009, 11:03
Also saw the show in Bath with three companions who knew nothing about Beckett’s masterpiece. We all thought this an amazing production with acting performances that could not be bettered. Totally riveting and compelling. Go and see it. It’s a real treat.
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jenny
Tue 5 May 2009, 19:11
saw in Norwich..star of the show was Beckett’s moral and political integrity..what a masterly indictment of Capitalism’s ruthlessness and the way it infects every aspect of society, from the global to the interpersonal level...God(ot) Bless Beckett’s heart..
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Amanda White (abarnsley@btinternet.com)
Thu 7 May 2009, 23:57
After much anticipation and memories of being so inspired by the play at school I watched Waiting for Godot on the opening night in London and was utterly engaged; aware I was watching a rare and special theatrical experience. I was amused, moved, provoked, unsettled by the brilliant performances from this stellar cast bringing Beckett’s intelligent play to life again. I loved the whole buzz at the interval and again afterwards about what the play had meant, everyone wanted to talk about it. How refreshing to see theatre that creates such a response. Waiting for Godot doesn’t answer questions but leaves you asking more. Fascinating to see how it affects people to watch a play that does not conform, characters who do nothing, seem not to know what their purpose is, laugh and cry at their own existence and end the play with the same uncertainty they began, hovering on the edge of doing something. McKellen and Stewart have a great rapour and despite the bleakness of their situation present a tenderness that is life affirming. Callow and Pickup are fabulously dark and fractured souls. I loved Callow’s Pozzo as despotic insecure monster set against the fragile yet curiously underminding character of Pickup’s Lucky. Waiting for Godot is difficult compared to a sing-a-long night at a musical (which I enjoy in another way), but that is why it is all the more memorable, it gets under your skin because it deals with the uncomfortable parts of the human condition. I’m still thinking about it…
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