Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (written in 1948 as a “a tragicomedy”) is one of the 20th-century’s most significant plays, if not the most significant. Those who rank it that high (count this reviewer among their number) are proprietary about the script’s every aspect, and that includes the spare set requirement: “A country road. A tree.”
That’s where regularly brilliant director Arin Arbus gets fully authentic. Most Waiting for Godot productions feature a skimpy, undernourished tree boasting no leaves in the first act and, at the most, two or three hopeless leaves in the second. Typically, they skimp on the country road, content with only a barren patch of land furnished by a rock or two and exposing an overcast vista.
Not Arbus, who’s working at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, where a thrust stage is easily accommodated. So, there she has her lengthy road, on which always creative designer Riccardo Hernandez has specified two unbroken yellow lines straight down the middle. Perhaps needlessly to say, the lines serve as symbolic, suggesting that danger awaits those attempting to cross it illegally.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Arbus may not be the first to be this true to Beckett, but of the many stage revivals I’ve attended — not to mention the 60-performance initial 1956 New York City production starring Bert Lahr and E. G. Marshall — I’ve never seen one so scrupulously realized. And please note that I’ve spent so much time going on about this one aspect of Arbus’ treatment because it’s immediately representative of her entire supervision of Beckett’s comedy and accompanying tragedy — or is Waiting for Godot a genuine tragedy?
The way-down-at-heel Estragon (Michael Shannon) and the only slightly better shod Vladimir (Paul Sparks) appear to be the only locals populating this particular stretch of country road. Estragon is so occupied with his heels that when first seen he’s seated on a rock having trouble taking off his boots. “Nothing to be done” is how he begins his conversation with Estragon, “nothing” being a word that crops up frequently (although perhaps not as often as in King Lear, where the third-act heath isn’t unlike the Estragon-Vladimir territory).
“Nothing to be done” isn’t exactly what follows in Beckett’s depiction of a pair of destitute bums who carry on plenty while waiting for whoever this Godot person or entity is. (They seem to survive on turnips and carrots.) Indeed, their interacting is repeatedly clownish. Beckett wants them to reap laughs, and Shannon and Sparks repeatedly get them, most notably in a vaudeville turn where for a minute or so they alternate exchanging three hats, bang-bang-bang.
Prompting the abundant laughs elicited throughout, Arbus has polished another approach unusual in the Waiting for Godot annals, if I remember correctly. Estragon and Vladimir are usually similar bewildered souls. Arbus creates a distinct difference between them, Estragon is somehow understated in his confusion at the aimless life they seem to be leading. Vladimir is sometimes boisterous, sometimes sleek, as when uttering a cynical remark like, in one puzzling situation, “I’ve been entertained better.” And Shannon and Sparks — both never better on stage — are aflame, Shannon flickering, Sparks fiery.
Meanwhile, the audience remains consistently entertained. The entertainment — though from time to time challenging — grows when Pozzo (properly gruff Ajay Naidu), wielding a whip and holding a long rope, enters with Lucky (Jeff Biehl, stoic, defeated), who’s at the other end of the rope in a loose noose. Treated cruelly by Pozzo, Lucky speaks only once, when taunted, and then in a pseudo-academic outpouring that includes a reference to a supposed duo dubbed “Fartov and Belcher.”
Oh, yes, Beckett throws in that low-comedy joke to assure that spectators understand his happy regard for the music hall — and, perhaps, an appreciation of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Arbus does something different here, too. Usually, Lucky is asked to recite the lengthy speech as quickly as breathing allows. This Lucky takes time with it, allowing the string of non-sequiturs it is to maximize hilarity.
As everyone most likely knows — even those who’ve never seen the play — Godot fails to arrive, though Pozzo and Lucky get a sighting in both acts. The frustrating Godot news is announced by a boy messenger (the innocently charming Toussaint Francois Battiste). His no-show only deepens Beckett’s concern for the human condition. Although precisely what he’s implying about the human condition continues unanswered: as if tragicomedy is obliged to answer questions.
The purpose of drama is to raise questions, which means that demanding spectators to wrangle with the play’s myriad interpretations is Beckett’s actual goal. He wants audience members to decide (or eventually not decide) who and what Godot is. The name’s first syllable includes a possible hint, of course. Or is it just Beckett teasing? It could be likelier that Estragon and Vladimir stand for humanity facing a figurative crossroads with nothing and no one to show them the proper continuing way. And isn’t that position as applicable now as it‘s ever been? Even more so?
“I can’t go on,” Estragon says, which is Beckett echoing himself from The Unnamable, where he writes, “I can’t go on. I go on.” Arbus and expert cast offer as persuasive an argument for the positive attitude of going on as might be craved in our current Beckettian moment.
Waiting for Godot opened November 14, 2023, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center and runs through December 3. Tickets and information: tfana.org
