REVIEW | Deadword Theatre's Waiting for Godot
Written by Wednesday Klevisha
Summary: You don’t always get to see refreshing interpretations of Waiting for Godot. This is definitely worth checking out. A total must for anyone interested in absurdism.
The Play
Waiting for Godot is a two act absurdist comedy by playwright Samuel Beckett. The show features two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, on a bare stage with a somewhat pathetic tree. Their objective is simple. They are waiting for a man named Godot. It is often describe ad nauseum as a play where nothing happens twice.
Becketts’ plays excite me because despite their oddness they are highly naturalistic plays. What I mean by this, is that the language feels familiar and organic. The dialogue feels like warring parts of the self that can largely remain unacknowledged in our day to day life. In Not I, original performer Billie Whitelaw describes the relentless monologue as an “inner scream.” The protagonist of Endgame goes on long monologues entertaining mostly himself and an absent audience at one point saying “babble babble, like the solitary child that turns himself into children, two, three, so as to be together, and whisper together in the dark.” In his writing Beckett tends to follow the rhythm of thoughts. His book of short stories, Stories and Texts for Nothing, contain these stream of consciousness rants that are filled with inner spirals and mental loops that, at times, make you feel stuck, and in moments, lures you toward insanity.
When this long form prose is broken up into dialogue, we see stark contrasts in parts of the self. In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir is mental. Verbose. Always speaking and thinking, playing with words and toiling in contemplative doom. Estragon is bodily. There’s an almost hobbit like wholesomeness to him. Everything is immediate and memory is fickle and fleeting. Fixated on physical pain and always striving to reach a place of rest. Vladimir’s breath stinks. Estragon’s feet stink. They are complimentary and counterlocked. Mind and body glued together by circumstance. They constantly ask themselves if they would be happier apart and yet they stay together. And to pass the time, they play all kinds of games to distract themselves only to arrive at the same question. “Should I stay, or should I go?”
Then there’s Pozzo and Lucky, who are clear reincarnations of the master/slave tropes that Beckett tends to feature. In Endgame, it is Hamm and Clov. The masters seem to tread a dead world, living off of memories of a time in which they were in the height of their power and now are made small by time and entropy. The slaves are stiff servants who physically toil to act as extensions of the masters’ body and outlet for their masters’ anxiety and personal entertainment.
While the premise and these character dynamics feel relatively morose, and they are, the play is full of joyful comedy. It is INCREDIBLY Charlie Chaplin, complete with the bowler hat, tramp tropes and physical comedy. The dialogue is musical in its rhythm, the characters are memorable and the writing is something I might call Irishly witty. It’s really solid, and this text and others in the absurdist movement were pretty much like the Adult Swim of a post World War Europe. There was so much senseless death and carnage that folks (artists and everyday workers) struggled to reconcile their ability to parse out reality and find meaning. The absurdists, who probably wouldn’t even identify themselves as absurdists, were at the forefront of cutting edge disorientation. And this sensibility strongly informs our current aesthetics of digital nihilism, ego death memes and existential confoundment.
The performance
While I’ve read this text like a dozen times, I’ve never seen it performed live. Most of my exposure to performances have been table readings with friends or clips from Youtube. And even though I delight in this text, I was slightly apprehensive that the show might feel long.
The actors were all dope. I would say as a whole, there’s a strong sense of ensemble here and the performances are all consistent and refreshingly contemporary. Jack Aschenbauch, who played Vladimir, gives his character a wide range often oscillating between furiously confused to gigglingly coy. His performance is frenetic and clawing, which is so fun to see in contrast with Jack Yeatman’s Estragon who might be considered simple if there weren’t so many instance in which he expresses profundity or plain truths. I think at times there are bits of dialogue that are odd to hear in an American accent, but luckily the show isn’t littered with “arses” and Irish colloquialisms. Oh did I mention Beckett was Irish? Wrote the play in French though. Then it was translated into English.
As for Pozzo and Lucky, I can say I was very happy with the performances we got. Andrew Bourque gives us everything we need in a Pozzo, which is a boisterous diva of a man. I really really like when these master archetypes are played as these like petulant babies, but like ones that can still command a room and tell a story. And for those of you familiar with Beckett, Lucky’s scene is done very dynamically. I typically have only seen it performed as sort of a straight monologue or reading, but the direction of this scene had a lot of cool energy. My partner described Liam Grimaldi’s performance as feral. The scene really avoids the trap of being antagonistic towards an audience member’s sense of entertainment, and is instead antagonistic towards a world that seemingly only he can see.
The blocking was all very natural. I recently saw a professional one person show, in which I had no idea why the character moved when they did. Sometimes the motivation of the movement seemed to stem from the fact that they had simply been standing in one place for too long and should probably be somewhere else. In this show, I think movement was done really really well. There are lots of jaunty moments of dance and collision, paired with cartoony gags and mad dashes, along with moments of quiet and stillness.
If I were being very critical, I might say that I would have liked to have seen stronger lighting. I think it’s tough sometimes with LEDs since they don’t always throw really well and they tend to be a bit stuttery when transitioning. And I think a pop reference or two could have been cut and the play would still be great. I am glad that the director took a lot of creative liberties with the text though. There’s a camp of Beckett purists, including Beckett, who hate when the source text is interpreted or changed, but I mean, that’s theatre baby. I appreciate it as an aesthetic, but if you want that much control, you’re better off sticking to the novel or auteur film as a medium. And when we start looking at how estates like Beckett’s and Albee’s try to prevent gender bent performances, at what point are we like, who gives a fuck.
Other things I liked: I liked the clown makeup on Lucky and the piano player. I don’t know why this phrase comes to mind, but I keep thinking it was nice and French. And the fact that there was a piano player who could do foley effects was so excellently vaudeville, which I think the world just needs a lot more of right now. I also liked The Rockwell’s performance space. I didn’t realize there were so many black boxes in Somerville. Where are the Lowell black box theatres? C’mon guys.
Overall, it was an excellent show. Had me and my partner cackling in our seats. If you plan on going to any of the remaining shows, let me know. I’d be definitely down to see this again.
