At Theatr Clwyd |
| Clwyd Theatr Cymru- Waiting for Godot , Theatr Clwyd , May 7, 2004 |
| This review first appeared in the Western Mail.... Playwright Samuel Beckett's work is an acquired taste, and I have to nail my colours to the mast and admit I haven't acquired it yet. The world inhabited by Beckett's characters is desperately bleak, full of tedium, anxiety and casual cruelty: part, but surely only part, of the human condition. However, in Clwyd Theatr Cymru's new production of Waiting for Godot, director Tim Baker finds and mines a rich vein of humour in Beckett, too. The cast of Waiting for Godot are Vladimir, played by Simon Armstrong, and Estragon, played by John Cording. They are two tramps trapped in a deadened landscape by an appointment with the never-seen Godot. Designer Mark Bailey has turned the theatre-in-the-round into a conventional space with not one but two gilded picture frames containing the acting area, creating a sense of the boundaries in which we all remain. A bare tree, some Magritte-style clouds and a scrubby bank complete the scene.Vladimir and Estragon are old friends, indulging in bad-tempered bickering, displaying tics and obsessions with boots and bowler hat. Their battered clothes suggest better days of city-gent suits and wing collars. Anxiety erupts from them at intervals, chained as they are by invisible bonds to their appointment with Godot. Uncertain about the future, forgetful of the past, their desultory conversations about the mundane meander on, while the big questions lie unspoken. Vladimir still clings to a few vestiges of optimism; Estragon is the greater pessimist. They pass the time in moments of knockabout humour, childish exchanges, and long, Beckettian pauses. Armstrong makes Vladimir frustrated, humane, with a gleam of humour. Cording's Estragon is rapidly retreating into a self-obsessed, inward-looking world where his sore feet are more important than humanity's future. Eventually the first-act tedium is relieved by the arrival of the whip-cracking bully Pozzo, played by Dyfrig Morris, full of bonhomie and bluster. Pozzo has a sub-human creature, Lucky, played by Aled Pugh, in tow via a halter around his neck. His casual ill-treatment of Lucky appalls Vladimir, yet just when you feel something may develop Beckett returns to the surreal with conversations about pipes and chicken bones. Rubber-jointed and whey-faced, Lucky exudes a drooping, Christ-like pathos, culminating in a tour-de-force of a "stream of consciousness" speech about man's plight that has the audience applauding. But it is a premature crescendo. After the interval the play returns to a too-authentic representation of ennui, in which conversation, arguments and repetition enable the characters to dribble away their time waiting for Godot. Pozzo and Lucky return, but now Pozzo is crippled by long-standing blindness and Lucky is hampered by dumbness. It is only a day later, yet all memory of the previous day seems to have been forgotten by everyone except Vladimir. Or is he mistaken? Beckett's famously obscure works certainly offer questions, but provide no glimmers of an answer. Is Godot God? Are we all in God's waiting room with anxious Vladimir and bewildered Estragon? Does bullying Pozzo represent our casual inhumanity, or downtrodden Lucky our slavery to the deadening aspects of routine and habit? Director Baker and the fine cast work hard to make the most of the material Beckett puts into his plays, but I did not find it an enjoyable evening, and joined in the final, enthusiastic, applause with a sense of relief rather than pleasure. |
Reviewed by: Gail Cooper |
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