Waiting for Godot

Had a weekend away with my wife to see Waiting for Godot at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh this past Friday. The two main characters were played by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. This may seem odd but I had not read or engaged Samuel Beckett's play before. I made an effort not to look much up immediately beforehand either. Much has been written on this play and I will not engage this material much. I rather just want to comment a bit on the play as it appeared to me and what stood out. 

It was wonderfully acted as you might expect. To see Gandalf and Captain Picard, Magneto and the Professor, engaged in this particular setting was magical. Their two characters have a clownish quality to them which they both had a lot of fun with and executed with familiar comic timing. Having said that, some of the sound effects seemed out of place and even heavy handed vaudeville which was unnecessary given the strength of the drama on stage. My own understanding of the content of this play meant that I was ready for a more morbid comment on the meaninglessness of life. Ian McKellan seemed to capture this much more than Patrick Stewart, but to be fair Stewart's character was in fact the more jovial of the two in any case. There had been rumors that the two would switch and play each other's parts from time to time, but I think the casting was just right. Stewart is a brilliant actor to be fair, but he just seemed too magnanimous and happy and failed to convince me at least that life's bitterness had in fact touched him. His portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge is another case in point. I have never fully been convinced that he is an angry old codger at Christmas, nor was I this past weekend. Having said all that, this is a matter of taste as I wanted this play to take on a more angst ridden existential depth than I think the director wanted to bring out. The production sought to universalize these characters and their manner such that they could exist at any time in history, and as a result the play ended up losing some of its existential depth. The play may be better for it, having a wider appeal, but at times I felt that the significance of some of the lines floated off and lacked the purpose I sensed the writer wrote them for. This play will tour England and eventually finish at the Haymarket Theatre in London from May to the end of July. You may want to look out for it, but in the end, I'm not sure this production lives up to its billing.