“I know the mythology around it says ‘nothing happens, twice’, but in fact a lot happens in the play. It is actually a play of incredible action – it’s just that that action is about waiting, and is about suspension,” explains Canberra actor P J Williams, who is playing Estragon (Gogo) in The Street Theatre’s new production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
It’s this inherent contradiction that makes the play so fascinating, Williams says, especially during times of crisis.
“The world is waiting for peace in the Middle East. It is waiting for peace in Ukraine. It is waiting for personal relief from financial difficulties. So the play is absolutely speaking to the planet right now, and to the contemporary – it’s such a contemporary piece of work,” he tells ArtsHub.
Written between October 1948 and January 1949, in a Paris still recovering from the trauma of German occupation during World War II, Waiting for Godot – a classic of the Theatre of the Absurd – is a compelling and darkly comic exploration of the uselessness but stubborn perseverance of hope. Its circular structure – the main characters make no progression towards their goals at any point, ending up exactly where they began as the play ends – can also be read as a commentary about the meaninglessness of human existence.
Peter Hall, who directed the first English language production of the play in 1955 (Beckett, an Irishman, originally wrote the play in French) once described Waiting for Godot as “startlingly original”.
“First of all that it turned waiting into something dramatic. Second, that waiting becomes a metaphor for living. What are we actually living for, what are we waiting for,” said Hall, adding that the play’s legacy was that it liberated an entire generation from naturalism.
“I don’t think Harold [Pinter] or Tom [Stoppard] would have written the way they did write – or at all – had it not been for Beckett,” Hall said.
The Street Theatre’s new production of Waiting for Godot is directed by the company’s Artistic Director Caroline Stacey OAM, and marks the first time in 20 years the play has been performed in Canberra.
“And then that production of 20 years ago was the first production in something like another 20 years… But absolutely we’ve been thinking about [staging] it for quite a long time. But actually, post-pandemic and coming out of everything and the way the world is, and just looking at theatre as a whole, it felt like this was the right moment,” Stacey explains.
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Speaking to the play’s contemporary nature, she continues, “In contemporary life, we can be very focused on outcomes. Everything is outcome-oriented, focused on achievement and results. And actually, that’s only one part of the human condition. Waiting for things to be better, or waiting for things to change, that plays an equal part in our lives. [Waiting for Godot] is a deep dive into that part of the human condition that I guess we spend less time focused on and talking about than outcomes but, actually, waiting probably consumes us more fully than outcomes, which are very short-lived. They can feel momentary, when actually the act of waiting can be a lifetime.”
An existential comedy
Like many of Beckett’s works, including the 1972 monologue Not I (which requires the actor performing the piece to be strapped in place for its 12- to 15-minute duration), Happy Days and Endgame, Waiting for Godot has a reputation – largely unwarranted – as being difficult and overly cerebral.
Stacey argues that the play is far more accessible than many believe. “Moment by moment, it examines the act of living and it’s very concrete, and it’s very visceral, and it’s actually not cerebral at all. It’s grounded in the act of living, and that’s what we actually have to hold on to, and it’s that, actually, that’s quite difficult… It requires a lightness of touch, the work. It’s both bleak and uplifting, because it goes to the truth of being alive. It holds, paradoxically, both those elements.”
Williams agrees. “It’s also a lot of fun… Beckett was a huge fan of Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and some of those classic comedy pairings, and that love of play is there in the writing and it’s there in the routines, both the verbal and physical routines that he wrote into the play,” he explains.
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So why then does Waiting for Godot have such an undeserved reputation as being a challenging play for audiences?
“I think it’s probably just the weight of theatrical history,” Stacey suggests. “You know, the point at which the work surfaced and was created, post-World War II – and it is absolutely informed by that nihilism and also the devastation of two world wars, basically.”
In the 21st century, Waiting for Godot plays very differently, Stacey continues. “People believe it’s sort of weighty and difficult and it’s actually the complete opposite. It’s filled with play and delight and difficulty, but not in a way that doesn’t touch the human part of us.
“Speaking the words, you can feel Beckett’s conclusion that there’s no escape from thinking in this world, and that words are unreliable. He waged a sort of lifelong war on words, trying to find the silence that was underneath them. And so, on that level alone, there’s just infinite connection with our human condition in this play.”
Williams offers up another reason why people may have negative impressions of Waiting for Godot despite perhaps never seeing it performed live.
“Look, I think it also probably suffered from being on the school curriculum,” he says wryly.
“And looking at Beckett’s other work, some of his other work is pretty bleak and difficult. And I suppose as a body of work, if you win the Nobel Prize for Literature, then you’re going to have that baggage sitting on it as well. So there is all that expectation. But it is a funny piece of work. I mean, we’ve had so much fun in the rehearsal room and getting that sense of play into the work, which is really just honouring the text. It’s what’s there. You don’t have to force it to be funny. It’s written that way.”
Waiting for Godot is now playing at The Street Theatre, Canberra until 24 November 2024.
