godot

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Waiting For Godot (2000)

Director: Brian Bedford

Writer: Samuel Beckett

Cast: Stephen Ouimette, James Blendick, Tim MacDonald, Joe Dinicol

Character: Vladimir

Plot: Nothing happens, twice.

Review: Not exactly live theatre, as this refers to an audio recording done of the play for Canadian radio, but worth a review all the same. The director and cast are the same as Stratford's two seasons of Godot. And so to the play...

Beckett has never been top of anyone's list of casual reading and, as myself and other university students will testify, is quite useful to write essays about, but the buck stops there. It appears I've been doing him a disservice. Godot, despite its total lack of a coherent plot, the presence of confounding characters, and endless repetition, succeeds in being entertaining in its boredom. Bedford's take on the play as the last remnants of vaudeville theatre, played out by Vladimir and Estragon, does eliminate part of the tragic elements, but redeems itself in actually being both interesting and enjoyable.

Ouimette and McCamus are a splendid double act, with brilliant timing, even if they play it so similarly that, listening to the tapes, it definitely helps to have the text of the play around to figure out who's speaking. The format also means that all visual gags are lost, but the general energy of the proceedings and the two leads makes up for a good deal. As Pozzo, Blendick is appropriately aloof, sinister and pathetic all at once, and MacDonald, present only in his one 4-minute piece of dialogue, makes a big enough impression for him to have been there the entire play. All in all, entertaining, funny, tragic and soul-destroying. Typical Beckett, really.

Trivia: Stephen, Tom & co. originally did Godot at the Stratford Festival in 1996, which then got a revival performance in 1998.