Theatre reviews: Waiting For Godot | Here & Now
Dominic Hill has created a humane yet absolutely clear-eyed Godot for our glaringly unequal times, writes Joyce McMillan
Waiting For Godot, Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★★
Here & Now, Playhouse, Edinburgh ★★★
Spring is in the air, and it’s time, once again, to pick up the dusty mid-20th century gem that is Samuel Beckett’s great 1953 play Waiting For Godot; to turn it towards the light, and see what brilliant facets and new aspects it will reveal this time.
And that process can rarely have been handled with such love and tenderness - and yet with such robust faith in the play’s underlying dramatic strength - as in Dominic Hill’s beautiful new production for the Citizens’ Theatre, Bolton Octagon, and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, starring two Manchester lads now in their Seventies, George Costigan and Matthew Kelly.
Like the play’s two central characters Vladimir and Estragon - aka Didi and Gogo - Costigan and Kelly have been friends for more than 50 years; and from the opening moments of the show, they settle into Beckett’s bare and blasted world as if they had been born for it, sharing the pains and miseries of old age - Didi’s prostate problem, Gogo’s sore feet - along with a few laughs, and some increasingly vague memories.
Costigan’s Didi is bossy, mentally sharp, but unable to cope with loneliness; Kelly’s Gogo is baffled, confused and often grief-stricken, but still possessed of a marvellous sense of irony, and of deadpan comic timing. And together, they unearth all the comic possibilities of Beckett’s wonderful text, while spinning the play into a profound human narrative that is quietly gripping, as well as moving and entertaining.
So twice over, on consecutive evenings, they while away the time together, reminiscing, arguing, waiting for Godot; and on both evenings they are diverted for a while by the arrival of rich slave-driver Pozzo and his slave, Lucky, utterly exhausted from endless bag-carrying, and chafed to agony by the rope around his neck. Didi and Gogo are unambiguously portrayed, here, as old tramps, or figures from a contemporary rough sleepers refuge, rather than the faded music hall act they sometimes conjure up; Gbolahan Obisesan and Michael Hodgson are memorably vivid as Pozzo and Lucky.
And the result is a deeply humane yet absolutely clear-eyed Godot, for our glaringly unequal times; set in a world where the vulnerable are subjected to random and horrifying violence, where the wealthy can bully and kill with absolute impunity, and where Mr Godot - who may or may not have some work or solace to offer our heroes - never turns up, even when he says he will, without fail.
In style, the Steps tribute musical Here & Now - at the Edinburgh Playhouse this week - could hardly be more different from Beckett’s austere drama; it’s full of pink decor, big balloons, flashy showbiz numbers, and assorted brightly-coloured products sold in the big bargain supermarket where all the characters work.
What Beckett and Here & Now writer Shaun Kitchener have in common, though, is an earthy sense of what life is like at the bottom of the heap, in this case working in minimum-wage jobs that barely enable you to pay the rent, particularly when your husband of 20 years has just walked out.
And if the music in this show is possibly the least memorable I have ever heard in a tribute musical - formulaic pop, enlivened only by a couple of decent cover hits - the plot takes off at a tremendous pace, as our heroine Caz, played with real feeling by Lara Denning, finds herself suddenly single, just short of her 50th birthday; and fights off personal and professional offers from a double-dealing local developer to conclude that her path to happiness lies in true solidarity with her friends and workmates.
“I’m sorry we turned on each other, instead of on the grifter that came between us,” says Caz to her mates, towards the end; and it’s not only a sentiment that Didi and Gogo would recognise instantly, but a rousing political message for our times.
Waiting For Godot is at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, until 14 March. Here and Now is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, until 28 February.
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