Review: Godot a serious taste of comedy on a whimsical night

by Michael Brewer

Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" isn't for everyone. It's alarming, vulgar, dryly humorous, and confusing in spots. But that didn't stop me from staying in my seat, glued to the act like I was a cat waiting for a mouse to come out of the wall—the sense of movement is so strangely and powerfully fulfilled in this play that it leads one to question the meaning of movement itself, and the many different ways it can make us feel.

           

chris mikesell / KA LAMAKUA

The cast of "Waiting for Godot" from left to right:
Nicholas Atiburcio, Tommy Barron, Dan Randerson,
Ryan Wustewald and Troy Apostol.

For the traditional dramatist, or the person interested in plot and big explosions and sex and cause and effect, this play isn't for you. Go watch Hamlet. "Waiting for Godot" (pronounced, GOD-o) takes a completely different step to theater. In short, it focuses on two bums waiting for a man named "Godot". 

The dialogue and comedy make up the bulk of the content because there are no scene changes, time changes, or consequences. Critics call it "absurdism", or, according to the Random House Dictionary, "the philosophical and literary doctrine that human beings live in essential isolation in a meaningless and irrational world."

Before the alarm bells start ringing, keep in mind that this play is considered one of the greatest of the 20^th century by many critics. That being said, it's the critics that find it influential. How far does that go for the public? It's hard to tell, but it really depends on the person. If you have a two-and-a-half hour attention span for dialogue that could potentially hold serious ethnicultural and theological values, then you'll be very happy to make whatever you will of it.

For everyone else, at least stay for the first half to get a taste of the dry humor. You'll be surprised by the movement around the stage, and how much of the actors' acting ends up in the audience members' faces. But in all serious, don't take this play seriously—Beckett says so himself in another author's reading of the play: "The end is to give artistic expression to something hitherto almost ignored – the irrational state of unknowingness wherein we exist, this mental weightlessness which is beyond reason."

Kennedy Theater's production of "Waiting for Godot": B+ for excellent costume design, lighting, and actors' vocals. However, the shouting at times was obnoxiously loud. Watch this play once and think on it; it's not really a 'rewatchable' play.