Review-Waiting for Godot-ABA Productions
18-10-12
There’s two great downsides to producing a great play like Godot.
First, everyone comes to it with high expectations ‘cos it’s a classic – and the higher the expectations, the harder they are to be met.
Second, most possible permutations (for indoor stage, at least) have already been tried, making it all the harder to do something out of the ordinary – for a play which is, inherently, out of the ordinary. (For those who want to know the plot, history, life of author, etc, click here for Wikipedia’s comprehensive account of this seminally significant absurdist masterpiece.)
This Dublin originated production deals with such downsides by taking things back to basics: set (a rock, a tree, otherwise bare stage with cyc), costumes (boots, beards, black suits and bowlers), lighting (day or night), sound effects (none that aren’t from the cast) are much as they might have been when Godot was first presented in 1950s Paris – except that, instead of Beckett’s original French, it’s in Beckett approved English and Beckett’s own mother tongue Irish brogue. (There are references to France throughout – the Eiffel Tower, the Pyrenees etc – and the programme notes thank ‘Barry McGovern for his authoritative advice on the updated script and the invaluable notebooks’ which suggests this is a back-to-basics show in more than just its minimalism.)
Stripped down or not, Godot works by its words. This cast - a standard-issue little and large Vladimir and Estragon, fat-slappy Pozzo and thinly lugubrious Lucky, plus an authentically young ‘Boy’ (from a rotating crew of 3 HK based Faustian students) – have the text buttoned down to a T. The audience responded at the close with 3 curtain calls and a plentiful whooping to suggest complete contentment. So it may seem curmudgeonly of me to say it could have been better still. But that’s what I’ll now dare to do.
With all the respect for the hallowed words, what also seemed stripped away was a sense of how much more might be going on – onstage or offstage – outside those words. The catch-phrase ending (‘Let’s go’ but they do not move) is symptomatic of how the characters say one thing but think and do quite another. In this production, lines laden with irony were brushed over in face value delivery. There were hints of greater theatrical complexity from the start of the second half, with Estragon feigning his bruisings from the night before so you wondered if he really was beaten or had invented it to attract Vladimir’s sympathy. The rest of the second act had generally more depth in its pace and phrasing and milked the comedy the more successfully for it.
I didn’t get the logic of a lot of the interplay between characters. Just because everything in a play is absurd doesn’t mean that everything has to be illogical. Even if we can’t trust the premise – and a substantial part of Godot’s genius rests with the seamless shifting of its (un)certainties – we can test it to its logical conclusion. Throughout the first act and much of the second, there was little sense of the logical ramrod by which Beckett’s characters push each other down the muzzle of their absurdly contrived circumstances. Vladimir’s clap-driven incontinence, for example, seemed clapped on rather than integral to his character and much of the scatological humour this drives (erections from hanging, kicks to the testicles and so on) was lost. The second act grounding of all four tramps had no logic to it and was the less engaging for it. Estragon was repeatedly awoken by Vladimir for no discernible reason. Perhaps the scatology is downplayed because this is promoted as a child friendly production. Perhaps the director wanted to stress absurdity for absurdity’s sake. However, it left me wanting more.
Time and again, the characters spoke as though in soliloquy, the others silent or apart. Even the head-to-heads of Vladimir and Estragon were delivered looking out to the audience or to each others backs, or on the run. What keeps these two attendant on Godot – for me, at least – is their friendship and, with each lost in a world of their own, it was the harder for them to establish what kept them together in their reiterated waiting. That, again, may be the director’s point – that there’s no accounting for who we get stuck with from time to time and that’s just the way things are – but the greater the sense of friendship, the greater the sense of underpinning despair – and comedy - that could come through.
There’s danger of course in daring to critique Godot. I studied the play at school, then university. I’ve seen productions in church halls, town squares, beaches and buses (though missed the Hong Kong flash mob production on the MTR Central to Tung Chung line, which ended prematurely when security stepped in). So I bring my own pre-conceived notions of what works and what doesn’t. It was a salutary reminder to my self-appointed authority when the two tramps, abusing each other in a slinging match of invective, climaxed with the ultimate one word mega-insult: ‘Critic!’
In summary, for those who’ve not seen Godot before, this is a perfectly respectable rendering on which to cut your teeth - if you don’t mind attending matinees (all evening performances now sold out). For those of you who know the show, you shouldn’t be disappointed by the professionalism and poise – but you may, like me, be left wishing for more than just the capriciously late arrival of the inattendant Godot.
Waiting for Godot by ABA Productions is playing at the HKAPA, Drama Theatre through Sunday. Click here for more information. We also went with a bunch of students to Godot. To see a young person's view on the show. Click here!
Comments
Brad
Does anyone have a dictionary? I'm gonna need it for this thing. Seriously Mr. Hope, we didn't all go to fancy schools. Calm down on the fancy wording, it makes you seem like an ass.
18 October 2012Drab
Seriously Brad, your comment make you seem like an illiterate oaf.
18 October 2012Brad
No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have to look up words when reading a blog. "possible permutations" Couldn't you have simply said versions to make it more accessible to your readers? "seminally significant absurdist masterpiece" You could have simply said masterpiece. "inattendant" use absent instead. You write in a tone of voice that is very condescending. I'm an American though. American English and British English are very different and it could be a simple cultural misunderstanding. Word choices matter.
18 October 2012G T
Great review, Mr. Hope, with exactly the kind of depth I'm looking for. Went last weekend to watch "Searching for Atlantis" on your recommendation, and it was very much how you described it. An enjoyable bit of theatre.
18 October 2012
Keep up the good work (and just ignore Brad, whoever he is!)the mighty wah
Great review. I was at Friday evening's performance and was bitterly disappointed with the direction and acting. I was, in fact, bored!
20 October 2012
Love the big words, by the way!Michael White
This show blew. And why did the program say it was good for kids? This show would have been a terrible choice to take children to.
20 October 2012Happy
Where did the kid's pieces go? I'm trying to show them to my students and I can't find them any where on the site.
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24 August 2017