Review: Waiting for Godot

"Waiting for Godot", by Samuel Beckett.

Presented by the Shenanigan Collective, directed by Wickham Pack. At Court Two from July 19 to August 10, at 8.15pm. Running time 2hr 35min. Reviewed by Alan Scott.

Waiting for Godot" is regarded as one of the great plays of the century; certainly it is one of the most influential. Watching it being performed at Court Two by the Shenanigan Collective it is easy to see why.  The Collective breathes such life into the play and performs it with such vigour that it could well have been written yesterday. Indeed the clowning from John Hudson and Patrick Duffy as the two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, is so classically done that it gives the play a sense of timelessness.

Samuel Beckett's prolonged metaphor for existence, two hapless tramps waiting at a barren crossroads for what never in the end arrives, is made every bit as painful and every bit as funny as it was when it was first aired more than 40 years ago.

Indeed, "Waiting for Godot" is a play of contradictions: the master who ends up fettered to the slave, the tramps who play Jesus one minute and the fool the next, and who wait patiently for the unattainable, yet struggle violently to pull off their boots; who want to hang themselves in order to pass the time. It's funny to watch, yet a nightmare to think about.

John Hudson and Patrick Duffy are very good; of that there is no question. They clown and fool around with each other like figures from a silent movie, but then invest the words they speak with such menace and foreboding that unease springs from around the audience.

They capture so well the tightrope walk between fear and frivolity that Beckett seems to suggest is life. They are well supported by Nic Farra and Chris Harding. Harding's arrogance is written across his sneering face. It is wonderful to watch, particularly as it contrasts so strongly with his eventual helplessness. Farra, as Lucky, times his one remarkable, but difficult speech very precisely. The pacing of the piece is not at all easy, but he captures it exceedingly well.

The highlight of the play came for me at a point in the second half when all four actors collapse in a heap on the floor. The direction here was spot on. With Lucky half-dead and prostrate, and Pozzo wriggling around helplessly, the two tramps try to fall asleep on top of them. It is then we realise what Beckett surely intends us to realise that with this jumbled heap of festering feet, fetid bodies, and slobbering mouths thus passes the glory of the world.

The light gleams a little at birth and then all is darkness according to Vladimir It was a fitting metaphor for this very excellent production.