It seems rather rude—no, let’s face it, it is extremely rude—to admit that I went to the Hampstead Players’ performance of Waiting for Godot with serious misgivings. Put at its lowest, Godot was one of the most important plays of the twentieth century, but it was more than that; it was a theatrical revolution.
The play is famously difficult. The script was originally written in French, and the story goes that, when Beckett heard that the English version was to be directed by Peter Hall, he asked the young man to make him a promise. ‘What’s that?’ asked Hall. ‘I want you to promise me you won’t tell the actors what the play’s about.’ ‘Oh, don’t worry!’ said Hall, ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea.’
Peter Hall’s production in the mid-fifties was one of the most exciting evenings I have ever spent in the theatre. The memory of it is still vivid in my head, but it was hard to believe that the actors really didn’t know what they were talking about. The meaning shone out from the stage like the Eddystone Lighthouse.
So why should I have been worried about the Hampstead Players? It wasn’t as if they lacked intelligence; indeed, most of them were probably brighter than the average successful actor. No, I feared that they might understand the meaning only too well. The reason was that about twenty years ago I had seen the play again, this time at the Old Vic with a distinguished cast, and it had been hideously disappointing.
Where they had gone wrong at the Old Vic was that they didn’t act the story of two men waiting in a field for something to happen. Instead, they seemed to be concentrating on the play’s inner meaning, and the result was pompous and dismal. Were the Hampstead Players going to make the same mistake? The text was packed with Christian imagery, and now we were going to see it in a church. How were they going to avoid the temptation of turning the script into a sermon?
In spite of my fears, the performance came as a glorious surprise. In his role as director, Bill Risebero had steered their boat safely through the choppy waters. The actors gave no sign that they had any notion of some deeper significance. David Gardner as Estragon (Gogo) and Bill Risebero again as Vladimir (Didi) were simply concerned with their own practical problems; Gogo’s boots hurt him, Didi wasn’t sure if it was Thursday or Friday, neither of them liked the field much, but this was where Godot had told them to wait… wasn’t it?
Each man found the other irritating, but somehow they had stuck together for a long time. Didi was the one with intellectual pretensions—what about the two thieves crucified with Christ?—but Gogo (in spite of his distressingly poor short-term memory) seemed to react to life with more intense feeling. He could at least remember the pretty maps of the Holy Land in the back of a Bible and the carrot he had eaten yesterday. For all their differences, it was clear the pair were never likely to part.
Through the field to these two dissatisfied people came a terrifying procession of two other men: a cruel bully called Pozzo (played by Harlequin), driving a slave called Lucky (Matthew Williams) to market, where he intended to sell him. His brutal treatment of the poor man shocked Didi and Gogo, though they didn’t see what they could do about it. In fact, when Gogo tried to help Lucky, all he got from him was a savage kick on the shin.
Gradually it emerged that Pozzo was not as coarsely confident as he had seemed at first. He was worried about his health and nervously anxious to make a good impression. Finally he admitted that all his ideas and fine phrases had been taught to him by Lucky in earlier, happier days.
Up till this point, Lucky had been utterly silent, but now Pozzo encouraged Didi and Gogo to get him to speak. After a few starts, they succeeded, triggering the ugliest sequence of the play. For about five minutes Lucky poured forth a breathless stream of words, pitched somewhere between a scientific treatise and a declaration of despair. Everyone was riveted with horror until Pozzo told the others how to stop the terrifying flow.
When Pozzo and Lucky had gone on their way, evening was falling, and a little boy (Matthew Gardner) arrived with a message from Godot: he was detained this evening but might come tomorrow. Then the boy went away, and Didi and Gogo had to look for shelter for the night.
The Second Act seemed to be the next day, but was it? The formalised tree, which was the only scenery worth mentioning, had been bare in the First Act but had somehow sprouted a number of leaves in the interval. The action (or rather inaction) of the play continued in much the same way until the arrival of Pozzo and Lucky, but now these two had both suffered a change for the worse. Pozzo had gone blind, so that he could not take a step without the help of his slave. Lucky had lost the power of speech and was now dumb.
Pozzo had no recollection of meeting Didi and Gogo before. When he and Lucky had passed offstage, a little boy came bringing the same message from Godot. Surely it was the same little boy as yesterday, but no, he claimed never to have seen them either. They were left alone, and the play was over.
Somebody said that Waiting for Godot was the only play in which nothing not only happened but happened twice over. Speaking of what is onstage, that may be true, but, when the production is successful, an immense amount happens in the consciousness of the audience. Certainly it was a stunning success at Hampstead Parish Church. I had come with a friend from Singapore who had already seen the play in Chinese at Beijing and in German at Berlin. After this performance she told me she was thrilled.
But the acting, the acting, what about the acting? It gave us exactly what we needed. Little Matthew Gardner brought a mysterious innocence to his two brief appearances. Harlequin (although young for the part) was marvellously arrogant as Pozzo, and Matthew Williams unforgettable as Lucky. His silence was terrible, but his speech was a horror. And how did he survive his repeated falls on to the stone floor?
There is not very much one can say about David Gardner and Bill Risebero. They were on the stage the whole time, but we were hardly conscious they were there—our attention was so taken up with the problems of Didi and Gogo. The two actors just disappeared into the characters, and we never missed them. We longed for those two puzzled creatures to find a way out of their troubles, but they never did. By the end of the play they did not even know they had won the hearts of a new group of friends in the audience who now loved and mourned for them.
Waiting for Godot – Review 1
Bill Fry