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.