Waiting For Godot
Director: Michael Hill
State Theatre Company
The Space
Tues 11 July

In a way, Michael Hill's handling of 'Waiting For Godot' was quite masterful, and it told in the production. Everything was simple, and seemed relatively unforced, even though the estate of playwright Samuel Beckett issues precise instructions on the staging and design of just about every aspect of the play.

It's easy to overplay the hand, even with a play where the action really is all in the dialogue and it seems that nothing really happens.

Firstly, teaming Paul Blackwell and Stephen Sheehan as the two tramps Vladimir and Estragon is a great - if totally predictable - move. For Sheehan, it's the 'clown' role he's pursued for years, for Blackwell, the clown he's played for years. I felt Blackwell might well overdo it, but something held him back... working with such a demanding script, perhaps?

And it is demanding. Samuel Beckett's mind is a bleak and dark place and this is a black comedy which looks at man's state of mind, of our quest for meaning and approval. It's been a favourite play of mine for many years, so I especially wanted to see a production tweaked by Beckett twenty years or so after he wrote it.

It's sharp; two men wait at a crossroads for their acquaintance Godot. He will join them, they're sure. It's merely a question of waiting, and they are rewarded. But the strangers who come to the crossroads are Pozzo and Lucky, a rude and domineering buffoon and his hapless enslaved companion.

Jonathon Mill as Pozzo is boorish and a trifle overbearing, theatrically speaking, whereas Rory Walker as Lucky seems underused.

And so Vladimir and Estragon wait, sure that Godot will come... perhaps tomorrow... gradually they forget why they are waiting, but the waiting becomes the reason in itself.

Every word in this script seems precisely placed, every direction a subtlety in Beckett's considered opinion of the world. It seems akin to a long joke building to a laborious punchline; get a line wrong or omit it and the joke collapses upon itself.

State Theatre have built a solid performance house here, it's wonderful to see them taking on such a play.

Alex Wheaton