Samuel Beckett’s most famous work ‘Waiting for Godot’ is set in a limbo in which change never occurs and bickering tramp protagonists Vladimir and Estragon can never move on. And in a weird way the play itself is stuck in something similar.
Beckett was an absolute stickler for his stage directions being followed to the letter – he once banned the entire country of Holland from staging any of his works after a company staged a gender-reversed ‘Godot’ – and if anything his estate is even more protective. When Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter do the play on Broadway next year under the direction of iconoclastic Brit Jamie Lloyd, there will be no mucking around: no cute ‘Bill & Ted’ references, no live video sequences, absolutely nobody saying the word ‘dude’.
On the plus side, ‘Godot’ is one of the most consequential works of avant-garde art ever made, and if Beckett has rigged it so future generations can’t deviate from his 1953 vision (until copyright expires in 35 years) then that doesn’t actually put too many directors off.
James Macdonald’s production unfolds exactly as you’d expect. Ben Whishaw’s Vladimir and Lucian Msamati’s Estragon are still stuck in a ruined landscape enlivened only by a solitary dead tree. There is no funny business beyond Beckett’s droll surrealism, as the pair try to remember how long they've been there and why exactly they’re there. They both want to move on but then remember they are waiting for Godot - ie God - in a blackly comic allegory for the pointlessness of human existence.
What I think Macdonald does well is infuse a sort of skewiff naturalism into Beckett’s strictly defined parameters. Whishaw and Msamati are a lovely double act: Whishaw’s Vladimir is rail thin and high strung and in a weird way for somebody who contemplates hanging himself on more than one occasion, something of an optimist. He often drops into his plaintive Paddington voice as he attempts to put something like a positive spin on the emptiness of their plight. Msamati’s Estragon is grumpier, earthier, more pragmatic and much less sentimental. And yet he’s not the total nihilist some versions paint him as - there’s a sense of them being actual pals in this screechingly mad world. When they’re confronted by Jonathan Slinger’s brilliantly insane toff Pozzo and his grotesquely enslaved manservant Lucky (Tom Edden), Vladimir and Estragon immediately form a united front, Whishaw resting his hand on Msamati reassuringly.
And there is - dare I say it - a little innovation here. The Beckett estate has allowed some deviation from Vladimir and Estragon’s usual uniform of bowler hats and shabby suits in smaller past production. But it’s a big deal that it also happens in the first West End production of the play in over a decade. Whishaw wears a beanie and Msamati a bomber hat and they’re both clad in scruffy casual wear (Whishaw trackie bottoms, Msamati ill-fitting combat trousers). Combined with a blasted Rae Smith set that looks like something from post-bomb Hiroshima and there’s a definite hint of the post-apocalyptic. There’s the sense this production doesn’t simply take place in an existential theatrical void. Are Vladimir and Estragon supposed to be survivors of some great disaster? Maybe not, but the fact it feels like a possibility gives a bit more connection to the real world to a work that can sometimes feel sadistically cerebral in its diagnosis of the human condition.
Again, it’s a brilliant play, that you can’t do a lot to. The performances are the big thing and here they’re acerbically funny and infinitesimally tender, something backed up by the low key humanity of Macdonald’s production. In a way we’re all kind of waiting for Godot (to fall out of copyright), but productions like this make the wait a pleasure.
