Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
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by Samuel Beckett, directed by Daniel Brooks
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
September 14-October 14, 2017
Vladimir: “I’ve been better entertained”
Soulpepper first staged Samuel Beckett’s classic Waiting for Godot in 2004 directed by Albert Schultz with the unusual pairing of William Hutt and Jordan Pettle as Vladimir and Estragon. Now Soulpepper is staging the work again this time directed by Daniel Brooks with what might seem an ideal cast of Diego Matamoros and Oliver Dennis as the two time-killing tramps. Brooks is clearly looking for a new new take on Godot, but his peculiar choices do not lead to a very satisfying production.
Beckett’s indication of the play’s setting is simple: “A country road. A tree”. That’s it. Most productions on a proscenium stage emphasize the vast wasteland that Vladimir and Estragon inhabit by having a cyclorama cover the back wall of the stage the better to highlight the tree and to allow the lighting designer to show us the two tramps in silhouette. This is exactly what Schultz did for his production in 2004. Brooks, however, takes a different course. He has had Lorenzo Savoini create a worn-looking proscenium for the Michael Young Theatre at the Young Centre apparently to reinforce the notion that the play is taking place on a stage. Brian Bedford used this idea to great effect in his Godot for Stratford in 1996. Setting the play on an antique stage allowed Bedford to play up all the references to musical hall in the text like the hat-switching routine in Act 2.
Unfortunately, Brooks doesn’t do this. When the red velvet curtains part what we see is not a “country road” but a kind of concrete box with a wooden floor that could serve very well for Beckett’s play Endgame that Brooks directed for Soulpepper in 1999 and 2012. All the back wall needs are two small windows in it to suit that play. Savoini does supply a tree, but he gives the tramps one cinder block and one small section of a wooden beam to sit on. So where are we – in the country, in the city or just in an ugly box-like set?
Although Brooks has placed the action on a stage, he makes almost no use of the references in the text to the audience. Commonly, the phrase “that bog” or the sentences “There’s no lack of void” and “Where are all these corpses from?” are directed to the audience – but, contrarily, not in this production. Only once does Brooks have Vladimir and And Estragon look out into the audience when they speak and even then it is not clear whether they do or do not recognize they are being seen.
Brooks completely alters this relationship and with it the central dynamic of the play. Brooks has Diego Matamoros play Vladimir as a grumpy, cynical old man. He allows Matamoros to lend virtually all his lines an ironic tone so that it sounds as if he doesn’t really believe anything he says. This includes the crucial answer to why he and Estragon cannot leave which is “We are waiting for Godot”. This does harm to the play because if Vladimir does not sound as if he believes this is their reason for waiting then the action of the play is even more meaningless than it already is.
Usually, Vladimir begins with conviction and optimism that is gradually eroded so that by the end his statement “We are waiting for Godot” can be read as an almost heroic assertion to continue living despite the pointlessness of doing so. By having Vladimir view the reason for waiting with irony from the start Brooks deprives the character of any emotional arc and turns the one figure who is our main moral compass in the play into a blank.
Estragon is usually portrayed as not as quick-witted as Vladimir and dependant on him for comfort and protection. Psychologically, “waiting for Godot” is Vladimir’s way of giving Estragon a sense of purpose. Brooks, however, has decided to have Oliver Dennis portray Estragon as nearly as cynical as Vladimir and has him deliver many, though luckily not all his lines with an ironic tone.
This changes the character completely and makes him as representative of the intellect through his sense of irony as Vladimir. Gone thus is the philosophically and dramatically intriguing mind-body relationship that the two tramps can represent. Brooks replaces this with two people who sound as if they don’t even believe in their own reason for staying together or for doing anything. Vivian Mercier, a critic of the original English-language production, famously said that Godot is “a play in which nothing happens twice”. The miracle of Beckett’s writing is that he may write a play about boredom but so much actually happens that it is actually never boring. Brooks, however, by destroying the dynamic between the two main characters has succeeding where all previous productions I’ve seen have failed in making the play itself feel boring. Brooks denies the characters any dramatic change and presents their views as static. Yet, the play is not about stasis. The change from Act 1 to 2 in the tree, in Estragon’s boots and in the physical state of Pozzo and Lucky show that change happens. It is perverse, therefore, not to permit change to happen in the two main characters.
Here Brooks has Rick Roberts portray Pozzo as if her were a Southern gentleman, without the accent, who is much more like a showman than a tyrant. Unlike the usual depiction of Pozzo, Brooks has Roberts emphasize Pozzo’s congeniality. When Roberts’s Pozzo asks Vladimir and Estragon how they like his speech about the night, Roberts does not make it sound like a vain, rhetorical question but rather a sincere request for his audience’s views. It is an amazing thing to see an actor completely change the nature of a character simply by using different intonation and pauses, but Roberts accomplishes this and surprisingly makes us view Pozzo in a completely different, more positive light. Roberts makes Pozzo’s cries of despair in Act 2 signs of the only keenly felt emotions in the play.
Without having Pozzo as a brutal blowhard, his relationship to Lucky changes. When Pozzo tells Vladimir and Estragon that Lucky is trying to impress him with his ability to serve, this time we believe him instead of assuming that, as usual, a man in power is misreading the feelings of those he has enslaved. What emerges is the possibility that despite the obvious pain that Pozzo causes him, Lucky may willingly be part of a sadomasochistic relationship.
As Lucky, Alex McCooeye, his face painted white, looks like a man at death’s door. His dance of “The Net” looks less like an expression of his own situation than that of all people. This Brooks emphasizes by having Vladimir and Estragon periodically imitate it after Lucky is gone. Many directors have Lucky “think” by rattling off his long speech as quickly as possible so that it seems to make no sense. Brooks, however, has McCooeye deliver the speech as if her were a mentally addled professor suffering from short-term memory loss which causes him to repeat phrases he has already said. By delivering the speech slowly, McCooeye reveals that it is not simply a load of nonsense but actually has a statement to make about the human condition “that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation wastes and pines wastes and pines and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture”. McCooeye delivers the speech with great aplomb and well-modulated tones only to return to his silent expressionlessness afterwards.
Contrary to providing a glimpse of horror into what human relationships could be in contrast to the mutually caring relationship of Vladimir and Estragon, Brooks’s Pozzo and Lucky come as a breath of fresh air into fairly stagnant world of the two tramps. So too is the case of the Boy, charmingly played by young Richie Lawrence. His arrival and announcement signals that each tedious act is about to end. The Boy’s speech that Godot will arrive tomorrow is meant to have the effect of prolonging Vladimir and Estragon’s suffering, but since these two have never suggested that they ever really believed he would arrive, the Boy seems merely to confirm what the two already know.
Brooks has Matamoros drop his ironic tone for Vladimir’s last long speech beginning “Was I sleeping, while the others suffered?”. But it is far too late to change our view of Vladimir just because near the end he intones one of most poetic speeches in the play. It would have been far better to have Matamoros show in detail how Vladimir arrives at his great realization through the events of the play rather than have it suddenly pop into his mind. Vladimir’s abrupt change of demeanour from cynicism to reflection comes across as if Brooks thought the audience needed a take-home message.
It’s natural that a director would like to find a new approach to a play that has become a modern classic. The problem is that Brooks doesn’t make sense of the new set he has asked for, has deadened the dynamic between Vladimir and Estragon that is the main source of energy and humour in the play and has negated the contrast between the two pairs of tramps that should show Vladimir and Estragon in a positive light as one feeble example of how people should care for each other even in the face of a meaningless universe. Students of Beckett will be fascinated to see this wilful misreading of the text. Rick Roberts’ convincing depiction of a very different Pozzo may even make some re-assess this character. Yet, overall, Brooks’s new Godot is notably less full of humour than previous productions and notably more tedious. This is a great pity since, with less contrarian direction, the same cast and creative team could have produced an exemplary rather than such oddly ineffective Godot. If you have never seen Waiting for Godot before, this is not the one to see.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Diego Matamoros as Vladimir, Rick Roberts as Pozzo and Oliver Dennis as Estragon; Diego Matamoros as Vladimir and Oliver Dennis as Estragon; Rick Roberts as pozzo and Alex McCoooeye as Lucky. ©2017 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.ca.
2017-09-17
Waiting for Godot