Gscene News Archive

As one of the most discussed, theorised over, and confounding of all theatrical experiences, it's hard to know exactly how to approach Waiting for Godot. As it was recently voted the most significant English language play of the 20th century in a Royal National Theatre poll the answer might be with extreme reverence. But then again it also has fart jokes. And, of course, it's famously a play in which nothing happens. So it's a bit like Seinfeld. Near the end of the first act there's a completely unintelligible, seemingly endless monologue of random repetitions and phrases, which is one of the most weird, unsettling, and hypnotic things I've seen on stage. It's like a mind winding down and spewing a lifetime's accumulation of knowledge. Like HAL at the end of 2001.

But then it's also quite a bit like Laurel and Hardy. Sean Mathias's production emphasises the music-hall element of the play. On each side of the desolated waste ground in which the action (or non-action) takes place there's a column of theatre boxes. By their own admission the two protagonists have been "blathering on about nothing" for the last fifty years and the play concentrates on two consecutive days of their half-century of nonsense.

Beckett's works are supposed to be about the futility of life (on overhearing a friend saying the day was so glorious he was happy to be alive Beckett is reputed to have replied "I wouldn't go that far"). Maybe it's just this production but there is something very warm and even tender about the relationship between Estragon (Ian McKellen) and Vladimir (Patrick Stewart). Vladimir will quite happily hold Estragon in his arms as he sings him to sleep with a lullaby. But then there's a lot of talk about the merits and practicalities of the two characters hanging themselves.

The other couple in the play consists of the vain, pompous, faintly devilish Pozzo (Simon Callow) and his slave Lucky (Ronald Pickup). Another couple bound to each other for life but in an infinitely less benign way. Marriage. Maybe that's what the play is really about - maybe it's contrasting the relatively successful union with the one that's pure hell. There's also a lot of talk about religion and Christ and 'Godot' sounds suspiciously like the name Jehovah's close friends would call him. So maybe time to scotch the 'marriage' theory.

Waiting for Godot is, if nothing else, incredibly entertaining. For the most part. Occasionally you're mind might wander but that's OK.

It's hard to imagine this play being performed any better and the cast make the absurd and surreal believable and humane - and, when called for, rather inhumane. It's not an easy two hours, but it's not a difficult one either. If you can't get a ticket in Brighton then certainly try and catch it when the production transfers to London.

Waiting for Godot plays the Theatre Royal till Saturday March 28.
For more information go to:
www.ambassadortickets.com/Theatre-Royal-Brighton