I had been looking forward, for quite a while, to the performance we saw this evening of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the lead roles. I’ve seen Godot quite a few times through the years, in various productions, and it never fails to surprise.<\/p>\n
On one level the set-up is very simple: Two old tramps with way too much time on their hands try to make sense of their moment-to-moment existence.<\/p>\n
But that’s just the launching point for a dizzying array of ideas. And these ideas are never presented straight on, but rather are coiled in elliptically, so we often don’t see them coming, until we are already immersed in them.<\/p>\n
What is really surprising and delightful about this particular production is how funny it is. Stewart and McKellan play Vladimir and Estragon as a kind of old married couple, their souls by now so deeply intertwined that one without the other would be unthinkable. In this production their constant bickering as merely a front for their powerful love for each other, and the audience responds to this love.<\/p>\n
It’s a kind of irony which highlights Beckett’s genius: We the audience are laughing with delight, having ourselves a rollicking good time, at a tale of two souls who are so lost and rudderless that they are continuing wondering whether they should bother to keep living from one moment to the next.<\/p>\n
It may seem strange to those of you who know Beckett’s work, but this production actually manages to make him seem like a romantic: Yes, life may be meaningless and filled with despair, but it all starts to make sense if we find a way to love one another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had been looking forward, for quite a while, to the performance we saw this evening of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the lead roles. I’ve seen Godot quite a few times through the years, in various productions, and it never fails to surprise. On one level the … Continue reading “Waiting for Waiting for Godot”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14464,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14463\/revisions\/14464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}