Worth waiting for : Godot at the Abbey
In its early days, Waiting for Godot (Abbey, was usually considered incomprehensible and gloomily negative. But academic interpretation wasn’t necessary. Everything you wanted to know was there on stage if you followed the logic of what was going on. A lot of critics hadn’t copped on to the sly built-in black humour that keeps bubbling to the surface, not just in Godot, but in most of Samuel Beckett’s work. Nowadays the play is sometimes even seen as a comedy in the style of old-time music hall, with the two tramps doing what’s almost a Laurel and Hardy routine, wearing saggy bowler hats, arguing, and enduring mishaps and pratfalls.
This Druid production, directed by Garry Hynes, first produced last year, is an extraordinary piece of work. I can’t imagine that there could be a better interpretation of the play. It captures all the nuance of humour, pathos and heartbreak in a world where hope is brutally deceptive, and day succeeds day in painfully forgettable repetition. Estragon looks out gloomily at the vast featureless land around him, where they spend their time ‘blathering about nothing in particular’ but in which, pathetically, ‘we always find something to give us the impression that we exist’.
Marty Rea as a nimble-footed ebullient Vladimir hops around, a chirpy contrast to the more cantankerous Estragon of Aaron Monaghan. They can inspire and comfort each other, explode into bursts of indignation or get the most out of their dealings with Rory Nolan’s pompously amusing tyrant Pozzo, without ever losing the sense of being real people glad of any trifle that will fill their monotonous lives. Their comedy is integral to the characters, never just knockabout. The set is a spectacularly appropriate piece of barren artwork. The second half has most of the comedy but it also ends on a note of desperation that’s bleak, chilling and beautiful.