Forget the tree.
This emblematic lonely tree of the stage directions in the tragicomic masterpiece of Samuel Beckett “Waiting for Godot” is out of scene in the reappropriate renewal of Jamie Lloyd. The polarizing British director who has placed his conceptual stamp on “A Doll’s House”, “Sunset boulevard” and “Evita”, further recalls the standards of his latest production, face the master of ambiguity, absurdity and minimalism – but with mixed results.
Although Lloyd supplents The dark and sterile beckett frame with something more brilliant, cleaner and more cosmic – but without any style of style “Sunset boulevard” flowers this Go -Ronde – the existential anxiety of the room in an irrational world remains as powerful as ever – and perhaps more attractive for the new audience because of the casting.
This New York renewal is motivated by the star power of Keanu Reeves (from the film series “The Matrix” and “John Wick”), which makes a respectable Broadway Bow. Joining him in this serious project as Sisyphean Vagabonds de Beckett is a longtime Bud of Reeves, Alex Winter, his brother Goofball of the Crossing Cabling of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” which began in 1989 (the year of the death of Beckett).
This return match (“Together again!”) Traned the Vaudevilliens clowns of the playwright into cooler comics. If it is not guys Stoner – they are, after all, the two 60 years now – they are more like go -the -flow buds with their own relaxed rhythms, models of surrounded speeches and a good link. Although the two actors have a kind of ease of slack in the absurd volley, this low -temperature approach too often lacks humor, horror and emotional resonance of the work.
With hair and a scraggly beard and a dazed human face awakening from an unspeakable dream, Reeves brings tender vulnerability to his estrogens (Aka Gogo). Sometimes, with his well-folded arms in pout or for protection, sometimes in a frightening fetal position as if she were protecting herself from the unknown, he is a man-child lost in time, space and memory. But the sense of the poet that Gogo was once is absent here – and Gogo must be a soul that deserves to be saved.
However, the unwanted Vladimir of winter (alias Didi) is. He is clearly the driver here as the duo wait patiently and impatiently that the mysterious Godot will arrive. Didi considers that his tasks are: staying up, keeping faith, moving your boyfriend and clinging to hope, despite a loop without hope of disappointments and reports.
Winter’s face has the altered look of a person whose difficulties to survive in a cruel and violent world have wreaked havoc. In the end, his Didi is suspended by a thread while he faces emotion in a vacuum, realizing that taking it one day at the same time is a perpetuity sentence that he can barely endure and yet he does.
And about this void: the country road of Beckett is replaced here by a giant spiral structure which includes the scene, designed by Soutra Gilmour. It is an amazing and sparkling framework-it may be an ivory pipeline for the universe or perhaps the eye of God or all that we project. Although shocking at first glance for the familiar landscape of this play, he also feels thematically appropriate.
Jon Clark’s without place lighting illuminates the dark world of Beckett, but without losing his feeling of dread, allowing both clear and dark at the end of this infinite tunnel. The actors also use a great physical use of the epic curvature, sliding comic, slipping and rocking to sleep, although they are most often swallowed in the frame which seriously limits the rules of the game.
Brandon J. Dirden is the introduction by break in the static world of the duo as Pompous Interlared Pozzo and Michael Patrick Thornton as his almost silent and strangely masked slave. Dirden brings many colors to the indulgent bomb of this egocentric sociopath, his fascist brutality disguised in hollow clay. He is repelled, but TIDEN does it so that we cannot take his eyes off.
But Lloyd’s clumsy staging here and questionable assignments (including a Clap-Along audience) makes Pozzo’s relationship with Lucky Floocused and confusing. The symbols of master and slave beckett – the whip, the rope, the servant weigh down with luggage – are either mimed or cut and, in doing so, lose his true horror.
Thornton uses a wheelchair, and here his luck is guided by his executioner. But the character’s state of servitude is largely hidden in an awkward blockage. Thornton, however, is magnificent in the epic tirade of Lucky, an Aria babbling with her own inner logic.
Zaynn Arora as a boy’s messenger (Eric Williams in alternative performance) who brings the news of the postponement of Godot is properly fragile, scary and harsh.
One might also wonder what Beckett – whose strict surveillance of the productions was legendary – would make reeves and the air riff of winter, echoing the signing position of the duo of their film partnership. (Robin Williams also launched pop culture references in a 1988 production in which he was twinned with Steve Martin.) Certainly, many of the public loves him. Purists not so much – but this production is clearly not intended for them.
However, as Didi resigned, “the essential does not change.” Whether on the stages of post-war Europe, a room in San Quentin or on a pandemic zoom, the stray refugees of Beckett and their desperate need to be considered as they seek the meaning, the goal and the hope continue to find a new relevance. In current dystopia, this persistent leafpiece and this provocative production could be useful.
