Waiting for Godot review: Ben Whishaw finds joy in Samuel Beckett’s wondrous misery

Waiting for Godot review and star rating: ★★★★

Waiting for Godot has been called ‘the play of the 20th century,’ but that accolade doesn’t make staging Samuel Beckett’s most significant piece easy. The Irish playwright, who died in 1989, banned tampering with the set or script in adaptations. It hampers creativity somewhat, but even so, the writing still belts, getting at the chasm of emptiness we all feel at some point in a way no other playwright quite has. It’s not all miserycore: as Vladimir, James Bond actor Ben Whishaw extracts the sublime with impeccable comedic delivery. 

Call it a philosophy 101 session distilled into a couple of hours. Godot has a terribly simple premise: look at these long-suffering fools trying desperately to complete their days without the option, really, of opting out (sound familiar?). Existential questioning was the preoccupation of Beckett’s life; arguably Happy Days, a less-often performed play, gets at this topic in the most singular and effective way; one female burns to death under the power of the sun as she puts her makeup on and takes it off every morning and night, getting buried alive in a pile of rubble. “Another happy day!” Juliet Stevenson unnerved in a landmark staging at the Young Vic in 2014. But Godot has broader intentions; Beckett’s writing manages to pithily sum up the impossible contradictions of being human in what feels like every other line.

Waiting for Godot: Ben Whishaw is hilarious, with shoulders-high passive aggression

On a hostile graphite-grey stage, Estragon can’t get his shoe off. Vladimir tirelessly reminds him why the duo can’t leave; they’re waiting for Godot, some mysterious force or human that may or may not come (Beckett said the name wasn’t a reference to any god, or certainly not a conscious one). An awful man called Pozzo, like a Colonial leader, arrives on stage drawn by his enslaved friend Lucky, who, beaten to submission and tied in a rope, dances on Pozzo’s command. His death knell of sorts, known as ‘Lucky’s speech’, is a stream-of-consciousness ending in the word “unfinished.” If you’re ever predisposed to feeling just a tad unhinged, this might be the most relatable bit.

Arguably, the poster is miscast: Waiting for Godot is thought of as having two leads, Vladimir and Estragon, but at least in terms of the acting, Lucky is the meatiest role. Like he’s possessed, his arms and legs contorted into position by Pozzo, actor Tom Edden evokes a human so knocked into submission they have lost all semblance of their own identity. He’s superb and absolutely horrifying. 

Lucian Msamati and Whishaw bring freshness to the leads, Msamati swaying his body heavily around the stage conveying Estragon’s chaotic nature, though Whishaw makes you feel everything for hopeless Vladimir, all shoulders-high-passive-aggression but forever upbeat; his fatal but incredibly human blend of loyalty and boiling rage. “What’s the good of losing heart now,” he says to Estragon. “That’s what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago…” “What about hanging ourselves,” Estragon retorts in act one’s bleakest bit. “It’d give us an erection,” says Vladimir. That said, sometimes the duo prioritise comedy a little too heavy-handedly; I’d have liked to have felt anguished by their position more often, rather than uncomfortable at the thought of it.

Much hinges on Pozzo, the man who was born to be a leader and so lives out that life. Beckett’s message is that we’re all products of our environment; immediate responses to a capitalist society ranked by class. Immediately Estragon and Vladimir become submissive to him despite the way he treats Lucky. “No doubt. But I am liberal. It’s my nature. This evening,” says Pozzo midway through abusing Lucky. “So much the worse for me. (He jerks the rope. Lucky looks at him.) For I shall suffer, no doubt about that. (He picks up the whip.) What do you prefer? Shall we have him dance, or sing, or recite, or think.” 

There will be inevitable comparisons drawn to Ian Mckellen and Patrick Stewart, who played Estragon and Vladimir on this very same Haymarket stage fifteen years ago. We rely on actor interpretations to modernise Beckett and they must have had more obvious chemistry, but Vladimir and Estragon – 50 years together – aren’t supposed to be enamoured by one another. Their co-dependency is supposed to make your skin crawl.

Whishaw’s colourful trainers, chosen by costume designer Rae Smith, feel like a gentle contemporary statement against Beckett’s refusal to modernise, as does Amy Ball’s casting of two Black actors (Alexander Joseph plays Boy, a brief role played by three young male actors, and in another progressive move there is a Black, Brown and White boy in the rotating cast: Luca Fone is White and Ellis Pang Brown.) It can’t help but cast new meaning on Vladimir’s question to them: “Are you native of these parts?”

Perhaps today new writing would talk directly about the themes of depression and ennui that pervade Beckett’s thinking. With the advent of awareness around mental health, we don’t need to be quite so abstract anymore. But the abstractness reminds us how bad the misery must have felt at the time of writing, in 1948, when ‘just getting on’ was the way they lived. But of course, this writing goes way deeper than that; it’s an acute slamming of the systems of power that morph our piles of flesh.

Waiting for Godot proves to be as searingly relevant as ever.

Waiting for Godot plays at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until 14 December

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