T H E AT E R
BY RICK LEVIN
CALEB HUNTER AS ESTRAGON AND
JONATHAN EDWARDS AS VLADIMIR IN
WAITING FOR GODOT
HURRY UP
AND WAIT
Beckett at LCC’s Blue Door
L
ord knows, existentialism is old hat by now: It’s
practically taken for granted among the cognoscenti
that God is dead, life is meaningless, language is a
prison, we are alone, etc., etc. Used to be the
muscular existentialist pose involved an angry
brow knitted under a fedora, with cigarette ash dropping
upon a tattered copy of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra;
now, every 13-year-old playing Grand Theft Auto with a
belly full of Dr. Pepper knows that life is a bunk game, full
of sound and fury signifying nothing. We are overdosed on
information, and routed of belief. We are the straw people.
So, given that absurdity in the 21st century is no longer
the exception but the rule, what do we post-moderns do
with an artist like Samuel Beckett? And what to make of
Beckett’s grandest play, the eminently absurd Waiting for
Godot, now showing at LCC’s Blue Door Theatre under
the smart direction of Brian Haimbach? Can we all, in a
word, stop waiting for Godot and get on with it?
The answer is no.
Starring Caleb Hunter as Estragon and Jonathan
Edwards as Vladimir — those vaguely lovable hobos of
nihilistic despair — this version of Godot reaffirms the
play’s importance, not just as a founding work of
existentialism but as a timeless comment on the human
comedy. “If it seems like nothing is happening,” Haimbach
says of the play in his director’s note, “you’re right.” Of
course, something is always “happening” in Godot, even if
what is happening is the cyclical futility of life as lived by
MICHAEL BRINKERHOFF
two transients who do little but argue about and discuss
their lot in life, which is an eternal waiting for something,
anything, to happen.
The strength of Haimbach’s production is that it gives
us unreconstructed Beckett: stark, intimate and silly with
the slapstick of perpetual despair and thwarted desire. The
minimal set, anchored only by a tree and a bench, is the
perfect landscape upon which the two main characters
fritter and waste their days — which are, in the end, only
repetitions of sameness.
Hunter and Edwards give nicely understated
performances, though at times their delivery is a tad
wooden, as though the cerebral bite of Beckett’s language
runs dry in their mouths. Where both actors excel is in
capturing the bawdy physical humor of which Beckett was
such a fan, and which is a crucial counterpoint to the arid
intellectual games the writer plays. This is no small
achievement, and — along with solid performances by
Jack Lemhouse as Lucky and Conner Lindsley as Pozzo
— it makes this production more than worthwhile. ■
Waiting for Godot runs through Feb. 15 at LCC’s Blue Door Theatre; $5
students and seniors, $8-$10 general.
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