Waiting for answers . . .

Waiting For Godot - by Samuel Beckett

directed by Stephen A. Brown

York Theatre production of March 6 - March 27

review March 27th 2004, by Louis Lopardi

In Bergman's masterpiece screenplay The Seventh Seal, the protagonist states that "having belief" is like making love to someone in the dark, "who never answers." That screenplay and 'Godot' share a gestation period: born in the late forties - wherein the world had gotten a tiny glimpse of the Apocalypse - and premiering in the fifties, with the escalating Cold War. Beckett's nihilistic anti-play is questionable theatre, and as for philosophy- it describes our problems well enough but provides only one answer: "On!... On!"

When Fassbinder founded his "anti-theatre" in Berlin he was not out to destroy theatre "qua" formal entertainment, but rather to shake-up his audience, that they might settle back down somewhat changed (hopefully for the better). Beckett takes a different route; he strips bare the conventions, adds a layer of European street-commedia, and the result is Weltschmertz with a Vengeance. His characters exist in a never-ending limbo, forever to repeat their antics for us. Early on in the play, according to Vladimir/Didi, they gave up their rights, presumably to secure their current condition: Living under a kind of existential "Patriot Act," they wait for a Godot, creating meaningless pastimes and reassuring each other that they exist, even if it is in a game of chance.

Stephen Brown kept his cast in almost perpetual motion; it was a ballet of forms and symbols - to match the similar word-ballet - albeit in slow motion. Ubiquitous bowler hats and umbrellas gave one the delightful feeling of having wandered into a living Magritte painting. (Actually it was visually what I always imagined the "dance-theater" of Schlemmer to be like.) Diction, through an array of shifting accents, was excellent, but we got a rather forced pronunciation of character names, perhaps to reinforce the simplified belief that Godot is God. (He isn't; but rather like a Pierrot to a Pierre, he is a diminutive of our own creation - something made less than itself, made, therefore, manageable.) At one time or another, everyone becomes their own "tree," assuming a crucifixion representation, with arms slung over an umbrella balanced on shoulders. We even get (twice; once was enough, unless it has to happen each day) a full representation of Christ and the thieves on Golgotha. The casting was perfect, and they were all kept in the same costume and beard style to emphasize their common bounds.

The Boy was wonderfully underplayed by Marc Silberschatz, who has learned to control his eyes: After delivering his painful news, he looks down from his "tree" and states simply, but with a glance that warned how painfully honest he was being, "But it is the truth sir." Interestingly, he was portrayed as a quasi Anglican minister at the top of the play, shepherding the audience, his flock, to almost "celebrate the mass" of this play; he assumed a position at the upstage, back to us, in the proper place for a celebrant - leading us out of ourselves. But later layers were added which I feel weakened the allegory (he became a bobbing and rocking rabbi... even a Muslim praying to Mecca - properly facing East).

Thomas Westphal, ever so good at characterizations, gave us a classy, insufferable Pozzo. This is a highly entertaining Pozzo, but one we know we will never learn from: "Don't count on me to enlighten you," he says in an almost casual manner. His "slave" Lucky (lucky because, like Robert Burns' mouse, he at least doesn't have to make decisions for himself) was played by the ever versatile Colin Ryan, giving us pathos, and conviction in his outburst of "thinking" - all beginnings of ideas, by the way.

As the more physically aware Estragon, we had Seth Duerr, a master of subtle body language. His suffering is real; his desperate agony on "We always find something to give us the impression we exist" was palpable. And Duerr's nervous questing signals us that he knows all too well that he - the more physical - cannot exist long without his other half - the more cerebral Didi. For these characters, being alone is worse than death.

It is Vladimir, our down to earth Didi, who ultimately gets a tiny glimpse (as through a glass darkly, to steal more Bergman) of the horrible, shattering truth: that, in Sartre's words, "we are alone" in all this magnificence, to forge, unaided, whatever destiny we can "for ourselves, on this earth." How appropriate to have Bennett Pologe for Didi, with his dry, logical, assumptive manner and bearing. He it is who presents the chance nature of their existence by pressing the Gospel story of the thieves crucified with Jesus - one, or possibly none, of whom, were saved. Pologe's perfect intonation of "Let us do something" (for we are all mankind) underscored the hopelessness that Didi alone comes to realize is all too real. When he mourned being "...alone once more in the midst of nothingness," when he bit-off those words, you could almost hear him mentally searching for alternatives. Desperately.

A scholar once explained that we are all creators, in that we have created symbols sufficiently powerful to deny our nothingness. We are, in fact, "all mankind," and until humanity realizes that, it will teeter on the edge of the abyss. This is, sadly, the state of things to this day for most beings. When Gogo whines, "We can't go on like this," Didi responds to him (and, more importantly, to us) "That's what you think!"

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