The Burning House Group
Review: "Waiting for Godot"
Spotlight: Waiting for Godot
by Quinton Skinner
For those unfamiliar with Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot, it will take no time at all to
get you up to speed. Two down-on-their-luck vagabonds wait
in a deserted locale for
the arrival of the mysterious Godot, who they feel will turn
their fortunes around. They
argue, make up, starve, and wait. Nothing happens until they
are visited by a wealthy
landowner and his slave-like servant. Godot never shows, and
nothing more happens.
Repeat in the second act, then bring down the lights. It's
a scenario so allegorically
potent that Tom Stoppard mined it for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead, and its
wordy claustrophobia surely informs the gabfests of David Mamet.
This staging by the
Burning House Group is energetic and funny, if at times a bit
broad in choosing
theatricality over fealty to the complexities of Beckett's
labyrinthine dialogue. Matt
Guidry plays Vladimir with a parody of pluck, his smile a pained
rictus. Randall Berger's
Estragon is all pissy irritation and impotent calculation,
particularly during his frequent
threats to leave Vladimir—both know, of course, that
there's nowhere to go. The action
is depicted with a rigorous physicality that borders on choreography,
not least in the
second act when Pozzo (Jason Vogen) returns. Before the intermission,
Vogen is all
self-satisfaction and heedless sadism; when we see him next,
he is blind and braying
piteously for help. Don Mabley-Allen is a shambling wreck as
the aged servant Lucky
(he also looks about a half-century too young for the part,
but never mind), until he roars
to life for Lucky's prolonged stream-of-consciousness rant,
wrapping himself around
Beckett's senseless poetry with distinction. At times there
is a tendency for this
production to become too shouty, too declamatory, and one wishes
for the throttle to be
pulled back a fraction. Still, there's a real sense of intent
here. When Guidry delivers
Vladimir's line, "No, don't protest, we are bored to death,
there's no denying it," he turns
to the audience with a leer to deliver the devastating addendum:
Good. One can't
decide whether to laugh or shiver.
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