Godot - worth waiting for!

If you’re lucky (geddit??) at least once in your life you will experience a production that is so good, so beautiful, so utterly pitch perfect that you daren't breathe too loudly for fear of missing a millisecond. In 2006 I was blessed by the Great Spaghetti Monster and caught an Irish production of Waiting for Godot at the *shudder* Barbican Centre in London (The Barbican: where absolutely everything is a baffling ordeal.). To date, it remains the most faultless, sublime and exquisite piece of any performance, in any genre, I have ever seen. Ever. If you can hunt down a copy, grab the film version of Godot done in 2001. This was the same stunning cast we saw in 2006. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276613/ Fast forward to Saturday night, and the current production on at the Maj. It was a marvellous show. Just wonderful. A romp! If I get hit by a bus tomorrow it’s cool because I will die having experienced Sir Ian on stage, in all his magnificence. In some ways, it’s unfair to put Sir Ian up there with mere mortals. As good as the rest of the cast was (and they were brilliant) there is just no comparison. As one friend put it, it was like watching a show featuring three fantastic actors, and one shuffling bum called Estragon. Apart from performances, there were other differences in the treatment of the play. This production was much lighter than the Irish one, yet both were screamingly funny. This one had an impressive set, whilst the Irish one had a tree and a rock and that was about it. This is a wonderfully accessible and very easily understood (as well as any absurdist piece can be) production. There is very little darkness and no sense of impending doom. Was this Beckett for the Masses? quaquaquaqua. Had it been done in such a way to appeal to the punters who were coming just to see Gandalf on stage? quaquaquaqua. I think it’s great that folk who would never ordinarily set foot in a theatre, will come and see this for McKellan. Maybe they’ll go see something else now they’ve lost their collective theeyata cherries. Quaquaquaqua!! I have made reference to the first cast being Irish, and I have done so for a reason. Was the Irish production so much better because only Irish actors/directors “get” Beckett? The Irish cast nailed it as far as subtext and nuance is concerned. Imagine, if you will, an American company trying to do justice to Don’s Party or The Boys. They could give it a Big Aussie Go, and may well do a superb job, but they will never get the quintessential “Australianess” of the plays. The thing missing from this production was the delightful Irish “gallows humour.”, the bleak sensibilities that are an unholy yet stunning combination of the turgid, the absurd and the hilarious. McKellan came the closest and I wonder if it was because he played Gogo as a Northerner with a thick Lancashire accent? Quaquaquaqua….. “….for reasons unknown..” JMD