Alex Winter, Michael Patrick Thornton, Brandon J. Dirden, and Keanu Reeves in Waiting for Godot.
Photo: Andy Henderson
When the inevitable Bill and ted Reference Arriva in the New Broadway Waiting for GodotKeanu Reeves and Alex Winter Handle It With Good Grace. I won’t saying, but for a flash of a moment, Beckett’s Immortal Clowns – Smelly and Bruised, Grizzled and Incontinent – Become Wyld Stlyns Again. Of Course is a gimme. And of Course, From a more skeptical perspective, the which project could be described as cleaving close to the Wisdom of the Strippers in Gypsy. Jamie Lloyd is, AFTER ALL, The Director Who’s Brought US Charles Xavier in CyranoLoki in Berawaland Nicole Scherzinger in Boulevard Sunset. But there’s also something Sweet – events, in its Own Weird Way, Beckettian – About the moment. We know Next to nothing of Vladimir and Estragon’s pasts. Twin the scholar vivian mercier to get Beckett that the two tramps “sound as if they have had earned ph.ds,” the playwright asked how he knew they hadn’t. How to have we weren’t omnce wide-eyed goofballs who loved garage rock and historical babes? After all, they’ve had time to grow old.
CELEBRITY VEHICLE THugh it mayten be, Godot Certainly isn’tey. It Attracts Pair of Actors who Know and Love Each Other and Who Want to Get Down to Some Serious Work. Winter and Reeves have got the love, and they clearly put in the time. If anyding, their didi and gogo (Winter Play the forms, the most cerebral and anxious of the Two, and Reeves the latter, the disgruntled tender beta clown) are still a little on the solemn side. It may be the impulse, conscious or not, to push against assumptions, to sequester their lovable airheads in the minds of their audience. But i think it has more to do with the hand of their director, which hovers heavily over the production. Though Lloyd is offten reference to as a minimalist, he’s not a light touch. The Natural Heir of Ivo Van Hove – The Last European It Boy Whose Grand, Chilly Productions Americans Eagerly Anticipated at Places Like Bam and the Park Avenue Armory, THEN, Eventually, on Broadway – Lloyd doesn’t Wait for a play to his aesthetic. Like a bespoke coffinmaker, he builds a specific type of box. Various theatrical bodies have to fit inside as best they can. Some slot right in; Others distort and cramp.
One Might Think that Beckett’s Great Hovering Question Mark of a Play, with its proximity to the abyss, would be a natural match for the director. His stages are consistently an expensive version of empty, his figure always essentially modern and monochromatic, and so it is: Lloyd’s habitual colloquer, soutra gilmour, puts the characters, Clean-Lyers and Envisions Godot‘s “Country Road” as a purgatorial skate park-a huge, the slick full-pipe of the curving Natural Wood, opening at the audience like a portal, or the cleanest imaginable sewer. Travel Through it to the Nearest West Elm, or to Meet Tony Hawk in the Bardon. For Long Stretches of the Play’s First Act, Winter and Reeves Stay Seated, Perched at the Tunnel’s Opening, Gazing Out Over The Audience. Only after intermission – as Vladimir and Estragon Undergo another day of waking, replaying the first act’s theme with variations – will really be begin to explore itsical positibilities. Here, this Godot Finally sparks into its Fulrest Life. AS reeves and winter scuttle about, banging into each other in awkward embrace and sliding down the sides of the Big Wooden Like Fried Eggs Glooping Out of the Pan, we can Suddenly senses their vitality-The Clawing, Hopphal-Against-Sliri That spurs say on, absurdly, even the gravedigger puts on the forces.
Lloyd’s Production Contains Too Little of this Vigor. He hasn’t made room for it. Watching his GodotOne gets the sense that the looming, unseen title character is MAKING ALL The Decisions-This Didi and Gogo Really Rats in a Maze, Bugs in a Jar, Responding as the Can Eive Time Tunnel is bathed in eerie Yellow-Green Light or Air. Back in the Fall of 2023, Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks on Beckett’s Contemplative Tramps at theater for a new audience, and i couludn’t help thinking on the production they go arin arbus while this new, Shinier version. Arbus’s was a warm Waiting for Godotan argument for the great Wells of Humor and Fleshy, Gritty Humanness That Lie Beneath Beghened Rhythms and Metaphysical Pondering – The Play’s Literary Significance Built Up Like Barnacles on ancient Whale. The Didi and Gigo That Sparks and Shannon Created Were Full of Blood and Bile, Real People With – No Matter How Obscured in Its by Time and Circumstance – A Long and Winding Relationship. Winter and Reeves Are Endearing Together (Reeves especially just make you want to give poor, stinky-fioted estragon a hug), and it is clear that they ‘trying for full personhour-but in their world does exist. Didi and Gogo Can Struggle, as they did in arbus’s interpretation, Because there is anything out there, Becauses this world, these bodies, this tiny stretch of time and frailty really is all there is, and what you will with you that? Or they can struggle gcause they really are in a trap, Because the air around say isteriously charged with some kind of paralyzing, determinist force.
Lloyd Himself is that force. Who’s Messing with the Lights and Filling the Air with Menacing Rumbles and Zaps? (Not to mention with pulsing minor-this club beats before and after the show. Laryd’s Presheshows Always Feel One Is About to See the Balenciaga Looks Come Down the Runway: Waiting for WinTour.) Who’s decided that there will be no three on this country road and that all props – carrots, bags and baskets, whip – will be mimed in think? Swimming, in fact, Godot, or for that matter God. It ‘just just the director, and this one ha molded an Environment that Reduses Didi and Gogo Into Flatter versions of themes. Neither Winter Nor Reeves is Doing Weak Work, but a Gray Wash has haen painted over. Line to line, they Only intermittently Find Deep Connection or Vibrant Color in the Text. Mostly, They Dependably Speak it Clearly and On Pace (Event, to My Ear, A Little Too Fast). But places that Earn chuckles cououl be getting gasps and gufaws; Moments that Feel Generally Meditative Could Be Devastatting, IF Lloyd were more Interesting in Character Work and Less in Mise en scène.
Because the Production Feels Too Cool (in More Ways than One), its hottest performance leaps out like a firecracker off in a soho boutique: Brandon Dirden’s superlative pozzo. Once for ACT, A Second Duo Crashes in on Didi and Gogo, providing the tramp ‘power balance with a lurid, distended foil. Pozzo is a histroonic slave-Driver, Lucky His abused chattel who speaks Only Once, Spewing Forth a Churning Flood of Half-Thoughts, Broken Refrains, and Direction Imagery-A Mind Shattera on “This Bitch of an Earth.” Here, Lloyd Clamps a Muzzle – Part Fetish Club, Part Do – Over Lucky’s Mouth while Pushs Him in a Wheelchair (The Actor, Michael Patrick Thornton, Uses a Chair). They’re intrigusion images in a vacuum, but in practice they don’t add that all that Much, and Thornton’s delivery of Lucky’s Apocalyptic Speech Never Finds Its Fuel. But dirden sizzles as soon as he hits the Stage. In a Long Dust and Dark Round SpectaCles, with a twang that it could have been outside a coney island Show or panning for gold, he’s a twainian scale to Him – his pozzo is a demonic carpetbagger, a carnival barker from hell.
Dirden’s ALSO A Natural With The Play’s Physical Comedy. As he Expertly Mimes Consuming A Picnic Lunch or Slips Down the Set’s Curved Walls Like ROBIN WILLIAMS’S IMPRESSION OF A HOT DOG on a water Slide, Reeves and Winter Are Also emboleded. Their fellow actor is introducing oxygen into the room and they’re starting to breathe. Life, The Cosmos, the Play – Call it what you will – has already brought vladimir and estragon to a narrow precipice. They don’t need a product to confine.
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