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Waiting for Godot
Referencing the past with the Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure movie series, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves), who reached maturity in Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020), have accomplished the extraordinary. They have morphed their relationship in the films and in real life and brought it to the stage in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Directed by Jamie Lloyd at the Hudson Theatre, Winter who portrays Vladimir and Reeves who portrays Estragon enter an existential oblivion of uncertainty.
They cavort and wallow in a hollowed-out, megaphone-shaped wind-tunnel (Soutra Gilmore’s clever set design). The gaping maw is starkly lighted by Jon Clark. Ben & Max Ringham’s sound design resonates in the emptiness of the hollow which the two characters fill up with their presence. There, too, Estragon loudly snacks on invisible turnips, carrots, and some chicken bones.
Two more
Others careen into their empty hellscape. Pozzo (a superb Brandon J. Dirden in a sardonic casting choice), a pompous, bullish, land-owning oligarch, has a sometime southern accent. His name means “oil well” in Italian. And then there is his slave, for all oligarchs must have slaves to lord over, mustn’t they? But Pozzo’s DEI slave in a wheelchair, Lucky (the fine Michael Patrick Thornton), seems misnamed .
Before these two show up and startle the down-on-their luck Vladimir and Estragon, the stars of oblivion wait for something, anything to happen. Maybe the dude Godot, whom they have an arrangement with, will show up. Maybe not. At the end of Act I he sends an angelic-looking Boy (Zaynn Arora, Eric Williams), to tell them he will be there tomorrow. A silent echo rings in the stillness of the void where the hapless tramps abide and wait.
An adventure like no other for Bill and Ted
Despite the strangeness of it all, one thing is certain. Winter and Reeves have undertaken another adventure that promises to be like no other. First, they’re dressed as hobos in bowler hats playing clowns of absurdity. The audience happily watches and waits for Godot with them. And it doesn’t matter whether they tear it up or down. The excellent novelty of these two appearing live as “Didi” and “Gogo,” recalling the affinity of their movie roles as Bill and Ted, illuminates Beckett.
Keanu Reeves’ idea to confront Samuel Beckett’s tragicomical questions in Waiting for Godot seems an anointed choice. Indeed, they do well in this hollowed-out world with no material objects. The director has removed the tree, the whip, any recognizable props. Thus, we concentrate on their words. Between their riffs of despair, melancholy, hopelessness and trauma, they have playful fun as they consider the existential value of life. Like all of us, if they knew what present circumstances meant in the overall arc of their lives, they wouldn’t be so lost. But they don’t.
Director Jamie Lloyd keeps Beckett’s script intact
Director Jamie Lloyd, unlike in previous outings (A Doll’s House, Sunset Boulevard), keeps the original script without alteration. Rhythmic, poetic, terse, seemingly repetitive and excessively opaque the spoken words ring out, regardless of who speaks them.
Salvation was a feature of the Bill and Ted adventures. In Beckett’s play no salvation occurs. Didi and Gogo must wait for it, foiled and hopeless about the emptiness and uselessness of existence without definition. Sustaining themselves waiting for something to happen becomes their raison d’être.
Politically speaking, isn’t that what some in a nation of the unwitting, passively oppressed do? They hope for salvation by a greater “someone,” when the only possibility is self-defined self-salvation How long does it take to realize no one will show up? Maybe if they help themselves, then Godot will appear and guide them to find their own way out of oblivion. Like the politically passive, initially Didi and Gogo do nothing but play a waiting game.
Finally, something
Eventually the two tramps’ friendship compels them to do something for themselves and each other. And this “something” they accomplish together with excellent abandon. They have fun.
Throughout the two acts we follow along engrossed, watching, listening, wondering and waiting with them. Their feelings unfold within a humorous dynamic in no particular direction, with a wide breadth of expression. Sometimes Didi and Gogo want to hang themselves to end their frustrations. Bored, they engage in swordplay with words. Sometimes they rage. Through it all they have each other. And despite wanting to separate and go their own ways, they do find each other’s companionship comforting. After all, that’s what friends are for in Jamie Lloyd’s anything-is-probable Waiting for Godot.
In Act I they are tentative, searching their memories for where they are and if they are. Continually, they circle the truth, considering where the one is who said they were coming. The situation differs in Act II because the Boy gave them the message about Godot.
In Act II they cut loose: chest-bump, run up and down their circular environs like gyrating skateboarders seamlessly navigating the curvilinear walls of the set. By then, the oblivion becomes familiar ground. They relax because they can, accustomed to the void. Maybe it’s good that Godot isn’t coming yet. They may as well while away the time playing air guitar. When Winter and Reeves mimed playing invisible guitars (like the Bill and Ted characters) the audience went wild. Why did this appropriation succeed?
In Lloyd’s version of Waiting for Godot, the characters’ reality is what they make it. Above all, they don’t take their situation too seriously. After all, they could turn out like Pozzo and Lucky. So they do have fun until they don’t and return to square one, the waiting game.
Pozzo and Lucky
As for Pozzo and Lucky, a further decline takes place. In Act I Lucky gave a long, unintelligible speech that sounded full of meaning. In Act II Lucky is mute. Pozzo becomes blind and halt, dependent upon Lucky to move. He reveals his spiritual and physical misery by crying for help. The oppressor caves in on himself via his own mortal flesh. On the other hand Pozzo still exploits Lucky whom he leads awkwardly. However, the last shreds of his bellicosity and enslavement of Lucky hang by a thread. These changes happened in the twinkling of an eye with no explanation. Ironically, Pozzo’s circumstances have blown most of the bully out of him and reduced him to a pitiable wretch.
Didi and Gogo acknowledge Pozzo and Lucky’s changes with little more than offhand comments. What, them worry? Their life-giving miracle happened. They have each other. It’s a congenial, permanent arrangement. After that, when the Boy shows up to tell them the “bad” news, that Godot has been delayed yet again, and maybe will be there tomorrow, it’s OK. There’s no “sound and fury.” We and they know that they will persist and deliver themselves and each other into their next clown show, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Comparing Waiting for Godot versions
If one rejects the impulse to compare this wonderful version of Waiting for Godot with other versions one may have seen, that wisdom will yield results. To my thinking, comparing versions takes the delight out of the work. The genius of Beckett is that his poetic phrasing, dialogue and characters stand on their own, made alive by the personalities of the actors and their choices. I’ve enjoyed actors taking up this great work and turning themselves upside down into clown princes. Reeves and Winter have an affinity and humility for this uptake. And Lloyd lets them play, as he damn well should.
In allowing Waiting for Godot to settle into fantastic farce, Lloyd and the exceptional cast tease out greater truths. These include the indomitably of friendship; the importance of fun; the tediousness of not being able to get out of one’s own way; the uselessness of self-victimizing complaint; the vitality and empowerment of self-deliverance; the frustration of an inevitable uncertainty.
Waiting for Godot runs through Jan. 4, 2026 at the Hudson Theatre.
