Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is the great play of the 20th century. At least it is in my estimation. And nothing done in Garry Hynes’ production, now at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater as part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, makes me think otherwise. If anything, it substantiates and enhances my opinion.
When I learned that Hynes, who co-founded Galway’s Druid theater company, would be directing the Beckett masterpiece for her company, I thought that the approach to Irish playwrights she’s demonstrated over the years is a promise that however she treats Waiting for Godot—which, by the way, Beckett composed in French (En Attendant Godot) and translated into English himself—would be revelatory.
What I hadn’t been prepared for was her eye-popping casting of tall, pencil-thin Marty Rea as Vladimir and of shorter, inevitably wider Aaron Monaghan as Estragon. They play the music-hall-like clowns who pass their time for days on end standing near a lone tree and a rock—the only objects visible for miles—while hoping the elusive Godot will arrive any minute but never does.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★ review here.]
(By the way, Didi, as Vladimir is known to Estragon, and Gogo, as Estragon is known to Vladimir, pronounce “Godot” as “GOD-oh,” not “god-OH.” That’s the French way, perhaps it’s needless to point out.)
The disparate Didi-Gogo girth is worth much mirth. Both Rea and Monaghan are first-rate physical actors. For example, when gazing left or right into the distance, they both leap in the air and land with one foot poised behind them and with their torsos leaning over the other bent knee. One hand is poised at the brows. Peering simultaneously in opposite directions, they make a marvelous recurring image.
As Gogo and Didi challenge each other to imitate the skinny tree that Beckett requires—along with the rock, as the set’s only assets—Monaghan and Rea, with Hynes, have discovered funny ways not to be able to maintain their balance. They’re constantly brimming with risible behaviors. Monaghan’s attempting to remove his uncomfortable boots is a reliably hilarious sight gag, if only for how Gogo continues contorting his flexible legs. Incidentally, the accentuating long coat Rea wears throughout is itself a scene-stealer. (Francis O’Connor is the set and costume designer and has done a stunning job with it all.)
What Beckett has done via Waiting for Godot, of course, is taken classic comedy duos like, for instances, Gallagher and Shean or Abbott and Costello and morphed them into absurdist theater. A sketch such as the Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First” is grounded in absurd humor, but it’s Beckett who transforms the confused stand-up communications into profound existential humor.
As a longtime Waiting for Godot partisan—I saw the original American production with Bert Lahr as Estragon and E. G. Marshall is Vladimir, and that hooked me—I did experience, at Hynes’ hands, a new revelation this time. It involves the ambivalent attitude Vladimir and Estragon have towards each other.
Several times the men discuss going it alone—Gogo more than Didi—but they can’t do it. Repeatedly and more often than not reluctantly, they return to each other. I was struck this time not so much at their need to remain together as I was at my wanting them to remain that way, my straining for them to remain that way. Beckett is saying that rather than being lonely alone, it’s better to be lonely together. It’s quite a comment on the human condition that I suddenly see as requiring acceptance.
Surely, Beckett’s belief through his canon is that we are all alone. (Isn’t that the existentialist’s credo, as formulated in post World War II Europe?) Estragon opens the play with the words “Nothing to be done,” and the sentiment is uttered again. In another wrenching moment Vladimir declares, “Nothing is certain when you are about,”
Beckett uses “nothing” often, just as William Shakespeare does in King Lear, and indisputably Beckett knew what he was doing. There’s no ignoring that Estragon and Vladimir are Beckett’s updating of Lear and Gloucester crossing the desolate heath. (More similarities? Estragon opines, “We are all born mad; some remain so.” Lear again and again fears going mad.)
There is another Waiting for Godot pair wandering lonely in tandem, this one literally connected by a rope. The rotund Pozzo (Rory Nolan, looking unmistakably like a big Toby mug) drives servant Lucky (Garrett Lombard in unruly white wig). They appear in both Beckett’s acts traveling through the barren territory on their way to who-knows-where. Undoubtedly, they represent the upper class exploiting the lower class. Ultimately neither prevails, and that’s why they are forever hitched. The boy (Jaden Pace or Nathan Reid) who arrives daily to say Godot will not be appearing that day, travels without companion.
Eventually in act one, the usually silent, unresponsive Lucky delivers himself of an extended and impenetrable exegesis. (Lombard’s colorful performance earns applause.). On Pozzo’s act-two return, he has gone blind. (That’s another reference to King Lear’s Gloucester: his blindness). At one juncture, both Waiting for Godot couples lie helpless on O’Connor’s earth-tone floor, which gives Beckett more chance to underline his attitude towards humanity’s uncertain predicament.
Since Beckett imagined Waiting for Godot in 1948 and it has appeared many times over since then, spectators have worried over its meaning. They’ve wanted to know what the mysterious depictions stand for. When Beckett was asked pointblank, he’d respond that if he knew, he would have said so in the play.
Not an illuminating reply, is it? (Hynes’ production is beautifully illuminated by James F. Ingalls.) Nevertheless, I contend the meaning of Waiting for Godot is right there for everyone to grasp. The caveat is that the comedy-drama resists explicit explanation. Its meaning must be intuited viscerally. Observers merely need to accept that. That’s the wellspring of its greatness.
Waiting for Godot opened November 4, 2018, at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater and runs through November 13. Tickets and information: lincolncenter.org
