When first staged 75 years ago, many found Samuel Beckett’s absurdist drama baffling. What do you make of a play in which, as Irish critic Vivian Mercer put it, “nothing happens, twice”? It now has a place in the canon of major work for the theatre, and this production by James Macdonald with Ben Whishaw as Vladimir and Lucian Msamati as Estragon is a demonstration of just how well it works in performance.
The Theatre Royal’s gold proscenium is a softly lit picture frame throughout, a constant reminder that this is theatre, construct not reality, but the actors, playing characters who seem as unsure of what is going on as those early audiences, bring them to vivid life.
The curtain rises on a barren landscape with a single tree, leafless. Rae Smith’s setting, a chopped-off piece of tree, semi-sprinkled with snow and surrounded by darkness, though briefly, at sunset, it takes on a warm glow.
At first, Vladimir and Estragon (or Didi and Gogo as they call each other) are a tableau, still and silent until Gogo breaks that silence with a guttural gasp as he painfully prises his stinking boots off. Didi, in a bobbled hat, and Gogo, in a helmet with ear flaps, look more like rough-sleepers than clowns or music hall tramps as sometimes imagined, as they wait through the day for Mr Godot to turn up (he doesn’t, just like he didn’t yesterday, though Gogo doesn’t clearly remember).
Gogo is fed up. Last night, he slept in a ditch and some men beat him up. That seems to happen every night. “Nothing to be done,” is his resigned reaction, but Didi believes in struggling on until they have tried everything, though he often seems to drift off and stare up at a black, empty heaven hoping for help or for guidance. Gogo suggests hanging themselves, which arouses interest because it’s supposed to produce an erection—but they don’t have a rope, so that is ruled out. They wait, and we with them.
Whishaw and Msanati present a pairing of long familiarity and mutual dependence. Gogo may make Didi irritated and angry, but Whishaw makes him very protective of Gogo, whom Msamati gives a child-like innocence. This pair aren’t the music hall double act that they sometimes are seen as, though they deftly deliver the comic business that is called for.
More classically clownish is Lucky, a mute slave with a halter around his neck, controlled by his martinet master, local landowner Pozzo, on the end of a long rope. Tom Edden as Lucky freezes him rigid, still bearing his burdens; even his eyes don’t seem to blink. On instruction, he contorts himself in a mad dance and, when he does find a voice, delivers a tirade of nonsense as though it has meaning. Jonathan Slinger plays Pozzo like a retired colonel barking orders, but later, when he is struck blind, Lucky still solicitously tends him, for this is another pair in roles that are mutually dependent.
The last Godot that I remember seeing was also at the Theatre Royal with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. James Macdonald’s staging is equally impressive and comes across freshly. Beckett (and now those who manage his estate) have imposed strict adherence to the text, but different actors bring different qualities, every audience member has their own response and none of us are quite the same person we were in 2009. Nothing happens? That is nonsense! There is a reality about this theatrical construct that is both touching and funny: it is a production to see and remember.