by Deirdre Donovan

 

 

Samuel Beckett’s great classic Waiting for Godot never seems to grow old.  But it seldom gets staged with such clockwork precision that it takes your breath away.  In a brief run at the NYU Skirball Center with the Gare St. Lazare Ireland company (and Dublin Theatre Festival), its one real drawback was that it left New York too soon.    

 

You either like this play or you don’t.  I do—but can understand why some theatergoers steer clear of it.  After all, Beckett didn’t create it to have you bask in the glow of its syrupy-sweet sentimentality.  And he surely wasn’t trying to have an audience exit wearing rose-colored glasses.

That said, the bleak poetry that plays out in this landmark work is unparalleled—and unforgettable.

 

Before parsing the Gare St. Lazre Ireland production, I would like to touch briefly upon the strange but true history of Waiting for Godot.  In its American debut in Miami in April 1956, directed by Alan Schneider, it bombed. It would survive its nightmarish American premiere, however, and soon land on Broadway, directed by Herbert Berghof, to glowing reviews.

 

Gary Lydon and Conor Lovett      photos by Ros Kavanagh

 

You know the plot:  Set on a country road, it is about two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, waiting for a man named Godot to arrive and perhaps give them salvation. The other three characters—an egotist Pozzo and his ironically-named slave Lucky, and a shepherd boy who brings messages from Godot—mysteriously arrive in the play and just as mysteriously exit.  Estragon and Vladimir virtually remain on stage throughout, often citing that they have nothing much to do except waiting for the absent title character.  Is Godot a savior?  Are Estragon and Vladimir waiting for salvation?  These questions are never answered. But one gets a fascinating earful of Estragon and Vladimir talking about this and that aspect of their simple existence.  With its vaudeville routines and philosophical ramblings, the play is both a brilliant comedy and tragedy at once. 

 

The Gare St. Lazare Ireland production was first-rate (Sorry, the last performance was on October 17^th!)  Its acting-- Conor Lovett as Vladimir, Gary Lydon as Estragon, Marcus Lamb as Lucky, Dominic J. Moore as Pozzo, and William Houlton Keppler as The Boy—was a real ensemble effort with no slouches.  Judy Hegarty Lovett, who directed, blocked each scene with razor-sharp clarity and kept the pace whip-fast.  Ferdia Murphy ‘s minimalist set and tatterdemalion costume design, together with Sinead McKenna’s lighting design, looked just right. 

 

I had seen the company perform Title of Deed at the Signature Theatre in May 2012, and thus was familiar with the touring company’s bent toward delivering prose with a fierce lyricism.  In Waiting for Godot, this lyrical quality came through as well.  They took Beckett’s spare poetry and made it sing with a lilt.  In short, this company infused an authentic Irishness into the landmark work.  True, Waiting for Godot had a fine revival on Broadway, with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, at the Cort in November 2013, and I was duly impressed with the English sirs as Estragon and Vladimir.  But this Off Broadway iteration was no second fiddle.

 

If you missed this show, you missed something special.  My friend who accompanied me, and was seeing the play staged for the first time, remarked that its comic routines reminded her of a Laurel and Hardy act.  Indeed, this Waiting for Godot was funny, sad, and just as good as it gets.

 

Last performance was on October 17^th.

At NYU’s Skirball Center, 566 Laguardia Place at Washington Square.

For more information, visit www.nyuskirball.org

Running Time:  2 hours; 15 minutes with one intermission.