"Waiting for Godot", Theatre Royal Haymarket

So last week we went to see Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Things got off to a very promising start with a quick visit to Kettner’s in Romilly Street. It was here, once upon a time, that Oscar Wilde wooed young Bosie. Instead, I was very happily entreated by a couple of tasty venison sausages in a red wine sauce, washed down with fine red Bordeaux. Life was good, and as we made our way across Soho to The Haymarket, it was just about to get better.

All was set… a classic play, the creative hand of Sean Mathias, and an all-star glittering cast: Sir Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup. The lights dimmed – the magic commenced. I can truly say we weren’t disappointed. It was enchanting from start to finish. In particular, Callow’s burlesque interpretation of Pozzo was the cherry on an already delectable cake…


Stewart, Callow, McKellen

For anyone not so familiar with the play, Godot is a story of camaraderie between two hapless vagrants as they wait, forlornly and apparently in vain, for the arrival of a mysterious Mr. Godot. The exact purpose of the rendezvous is never properly explained, beyond that Mr. Godot may have some “offer” for the two tramps. In that way, curiously, the play is premised entirely upon an event that apparently will never happen – a non-event: Godot isn’t coming. So what are we waiting for?

Variously the play has been described as absurdist, or even existentialist – it’s a matter for the literati; but in simple terms it is a kind of metaphor, a tragicomic yet uncompromising reflection upon life’s manifold shadows: the loneliness, the fear, the boredom, the frustration, the constant bewildering search for meaning.

And yet within that terrain, there is also a rich seam of humour, and it is that which so characterized Mathias’s production. No comedic opportunity of the text was lost, but pounced on with relish and indulged. I never thought I could laugh so much at something so despairing. Indeed some of the po-faced critics and purists have seized upon this with a reproachful frown – as if someone had just farted in church. I disagree. In the end it is theatre, in the end it is entertainment.

In over thirty years of visiting West End theatres, I could name other productions I’ve enjoyed as much, but I’d struggle to name more than five. Perhaps three from the mid-eighties: Richard Griffiths’s “Volpone”, Lauren Bacall’s “Sweet Bird of Youth”, McKellen again in a 1984 production of Chekov’s “Wild Honey”, or more recently we had Spacey’s “Moon for the Misbegotten”… all of them quite brilliant in their different ways. For me, Godot can comfortably join this class.

So there you go my friend, if there are any tickets left and you think you can afford such an extravagance in these straightened times, then this Ealing Rambler humbly suggests you could do a lot worse for a night out.