kaydeefalls | waiting for godot (Reply)

So I saw a thing. It has a couple of guys in it, I dunno if you've heard of them, they're in some nerdy movies about mutants or something.

I had a bit of a theatregasm during this production. Like I'm pretty sure I actually had hearts in my eyes the whole time. This is kaydee: ♥_♥

Let's be real, everyone's here for Sirs Ian and Patrick, and oh my god they are clearly having so much fun playing together onstage, I would like to bottle them and sell them as pure joy or something. You can tell that these are two guys who have known each other for decades and decades. Their chemistry is through the fucking roof. And they've both got brilliant comic timing together. I've seen another production of Godot before -- about seven years ago, in Dublin -- and while I kinda think that one held together better as a whole, I definitely don't remember the play ever being this funny before.

Okay, putting my critical theater professional hat on for a moment: this is not a flawless production. Parts do drag, particularly in the first act. I'm not Beckett's number one fan, so that may well be part of it, but the first Pozzo scene feels too damn long in the middle, and that pulls down the energy as a whole. Thankfully we have Billy Crudup on hand to light us back up again, but I'll get to him in a little bit. I don't want to blame Shuler Hensley for this (he's a very powerful theater actor whom I've absolutely adored in everything else I've seen him in), but his Pozzo doesn't quite feel like he fits in with the rest of the production. That could be a deliberate directorial choice -- Pozzo is a rarified character in the universe of the play -- but it just felt jarring to me. Didn't help that Didi and Gogo both had lower-class British accents (and was McKellen getting a bit Welsh for a few moments there? I don't have the best ear for dialect variations), while Pozzo was full on Southern USA. (The Boy was generic American, and Lucky was...well, Lucky, but they don't speak nearly as much, so I didn't care so much.) Hensley was entertaining, but he was a bit one-note, and it got old quick. I do think he was stronger -- even poignant -- in the second act, though.

Also, and I know I'm probably in the minority here, but Patrick Stewart isn't my favorite actor ever? I mean, he's super great! I like him lots! But he does tend to fall back on a very traditional style of acting, which I think of as DECLAIMING SHAKESPEARE in all-caps in my head, and he falls into it at certain moments in Godot, and it drives me kinda nuts. It bugs me when Shakespearean actors do this -- I vastly prefer the more modern, naturalistic style of speaking Shakespeare -- and it really bugs me when it slips into non-Elizabethan theater. You know that interview where he's all like, "ACTING"? That's all I can hear when he does that. He's so clearly ACTING rather than inhabiting the character. Which works awesome for some of his characters -- Charles Xavier and Jean-Luc Picard, I am looking at you, you pompous noble jerks I love so well -- but less so with, um, this. I noticed it most during Didi's final monologue in the show, but in all honesty, even when he was at his brilliant comedic best, I was always aware that I was watching Sir Patrick Stewart onstage, rather than Didi.

OKAY DONE COMPLAINING. Because you know what was awesome? SIR IAN FUCKING MCKELLEN, THAT'S WHAT. If I didn't always quite see Didi in Stewart, McKellen inhabited Gogo so magnificently that the actor himself disappeared for most of the play. Seriously, from his very first moments onstage -- pulling himself gingerly up over a pile of rubble and fumbling around trying to get his shoe off -- you cannot take your eyes off him. I could hardly stop watching him when he was just flitting around in the background while Pozzo and Didi conversed. He's this sad, shambling, cunning, opportunistic trickster of a man, and oh my god I just want to watch him ramble haplessly around a stage forever and ever amen. And there are these moments scattered throughout the show in which he gets that mischievous little fucking glint in his eye, and that's McKellen winking through, and he is made of unicorns and moonbeams and rainbows. No lie. And then there's this bit in the second act where he's got his trousers rolled up above his knees and he's coyly sticking his foot up between Stewart's legs from behind so that Didi can put Gogo's boots on him, and then he fucking struts around in them, and it is glorious. Ian McKellen ships ALL OF HIS CHARACTERS with Patrick Stewart. ALL OF THEM.

On the page, it can be difficult for all but the most devoted Beckett scholars to really tell the two main characters apart. I certainly forget which is Didi and which is Gogo. But in this production, the two are a fascinating study in contrasts. McKellen's Gogo is a kind of a wreck, this shambling hobo who may or may not be suffering from some form of dementia, but at the same time, he's kind of the cleverer of the two. And he can function independently of Didi in a way that Didi, for all that he's visibly the better put together of the two (in his costume, in his bearing, in his speech), completely falls to pieces whenever he thinks Gogo might leave him. Didi genuinely seems to believe, naively, that Godot will arrive. Gogo's just there because Didi is, and because he hasn't got anywhere better to be. And Stewart plays the physical comedy very broadly, while McKellen is far more subtle and sly about it. You get the impression that when these men were younger and stronger, Didi was probably the subject of all of Gogo's pranks.

And again, the chemistry between them is just so, so good. They're like an old married couple. They bicker! They cuddle! They flirt outrageously! I did not actually intend to go into this play shipping Didi/Gogo, but there you have it. Seriously, guys, the second act is pure gold. And I swear to god, when all four actors are piled in a heap (YES THIS IS A THING THAT HAPPENS), I am 100% positive I saw McKellen fondling Billy Crudup's bare calf, to which I say, GODSPEED, SIR. DO IT FOR ALL OF US.

Righto, I do have to end on a different subject of adulation, being Billy Crudup and the motherfucking Master Class he delivers in Performing Beckett. Crudup is one of those pretty-boy actors who never ever ever took the pretty-boy leading man type roles -- he has a long and glorious Broadway career of playing dark and/or deeply disturbing characters, from The Pillowman's Katurian to the goddamn Elephant Man himself. He's been in a bunch of movies, too, though the one I really know him from is Big Fish (he's the main character's adult son). So, okay, back to this production. If you don't know the play, Lucky is a fucking weird character. He's Pozzo's servant/slave (yes, may the ficcing commence), and he doesn't speak a goddamn word for roughly 95% of his stage time. But even silent, it's obvious why they gave a weird little part like Lucky to an actor of Crudup's caliber -- he's absolutely mesmerizing onstage. His body language is just, again, SO FUCKING WEIRD. It's almost at the edge of clowning, but a little too jagged, too bizarre, too off-kilter. He's bent and contorted in ways that look excruciatingly uncomfortable for extended periods of time while Pozzo yammers on, and I can't help but wonder what kind of physical training he had to undergo to be able to hold those positions without seriously hurting himself. Really hardcore yoga regimen? IDK. And then, y'know, there's The Monologue. The only time in the show that Lucky speaks is at the end of his part of the first act, when he is ordered to THINK, and he opens his mouth and spews forth this rambling, utterly nonsensical monologue that is actual pages and pages long in the text. And oh my god, I don't even know how to describe Crudup's performance here. It was absolutely the highlight of the show for me, and given how much I fucking love the two leads and their interactions, as mentioned, that's saying a lot.

Also, jesus christ, even in really off-putting makeup and that ugly-ass wig, Billy Crudup is an astoundingly pretty man. Wow.

Um, there are other production values as well, of course, but this isn't the sort of play that I'm gonna waste much space discussing the lighting or costumes. High production quality overall. I do kinda wish some of the lighting effects were more gradual -- I don't like noticing Obvious Lighting Shifts when they distract from the acting onstage, as a rule -- but, y'know, the set was starkly beautiful and the costumes were filthy and shabby and lived-in, as well they should be for this play -- and there you go. I can never turn off the stage manager part of my brain when I'm in the audience, but there wasn't much to notice for this one. Beckett is a very minimalist playwright in that sense.

Moral of the story: all of the McKellen/Stewart shipper feels. All of them. And also Billy Crudup. ♥