Yesterday my wife and I went to see Waiting for Godot at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway, starring Alex Winter (you know, Bill) as Vladimir and Keanu Reeves (you know, Ted) as Estragon. This is of course stunt casting to the extreme. We went knowing this. Still, I feel like I have to get this off my chest: If you are not a “Godot” fan, you probably will not like this “Godot” — and if you are a “Godot” fan, you certainly will not like this “Godot.”

First the good: The set design (credited to Soutra Gilmour) was thought-provoking. Rather than the usual bench or something, the action takes place inside an enormous white cylinder, like a giant concrete drainage pipe. Vladimir and Estragon sit on the edge of this thing like two mice sheltering in a culvert.

Credited as the director is Jamie Lloyd; he’s also one of the show’s twenty-seven producers. Lloyd apparently specializes in stunt-casted revivals on Broadway and the West End. In fact my wife and I had in 2021 seen his production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal starring Tom Hiddleston (you know, Loki)… and I liked that quite a bit, actually. There’s nothing wrong with stunt-casting per se. The problems start when you think the casting will bring in the audiences so you can cut out little things like direction and props.

The production feels a lot like a children’s show. I don’t mean a show for children, I mean a show put on by children. Like, a bunch of middle-schoolers putting on scenes from Shakespeare. Not a middle-school play, either — that would generally have a teacher in charge of costuming and props and stuff. Like, a middle-school play would make sure that when Hamlet says “Alas, poor Yorick,” he’s got a skull to hold; and when Hamlet and Laertes duel, they do it with some kind of swords. At the Hudson Theatre, nobody is in charge of that.

Notably absent from the stage is the tree. You know, the willow tree, which has no leaves in Act 1 and “four or five leaves” in Act 2. The singular tree whose singularity indicates that they must be waiting in the correct spot. The tree from whose bough they consider hanging themselves. This tree is… not present. Nor are many important props.

VLADIMIR: Do you want a carrot?
ESTRAGON: Is that all there is?
VLADIMIR: I might have some turnips.
ESTRAGON: Give me a carrot. (Vladimir pretends to rummage in his pockets, pretends to take out a turnip, and pretends to give it to Estragon, who pretends to receive it and takes a pretend bite of it. Angrily.) It’s a turnip!
VLADIMIR: Oh, pardon! I could have sworn it was a carrot. (He pretends to rummage again.) All that’s turnips. You must have eaten the last. No, wait, I have it. (He brings out a pretend carrot. It looks exactly like the pretend turnip. He pretends to give the carrot to Estragon.) There, dear fellow. (Estragon pretends to eat the carrot.) Make it last — that’s the end of them.
ESTRAGON: (pretending to chew) I asked you a question. Did you reply?
VLADIMIR: How’s the carrot?
ESTRAGON: It’s a carrot. (It is not.)

Pozzo and Lucky arrive, from the upstage end of the giant drainpipe. (This thematically makes no sense; they should be entering downstage left or right, passing in front of the tramps’ shelter. The world is outside the culvert, downstage, in the direction of that invisible tree; not upstage, interior.) Pozzo is wearing dark glasses. Lucky is in a wheelchair, wearing some kind of Bane muzzle. There is no rope; no whip; no baggage.

Now, it’s an interesting premise to put Lucky — the porter, pratfaller, dancer, kicker of Estragon — in a wheelchair. (Actor Michael Patrick Thornton is in real life also confined to a wheelchair.) But if you do that — if you eliminate the bags, the pratfalls, the kick — you must change the script to match. Lacking direction, the actors neither change Beckett’s words nor give the appearance of understanding them. Beckett’s Pozzo punctuates his monologue with peremptory commands — “Back! Closer! Stop!” — but this production’s Lucky cannot obsequiously rush to obey; at best he can loll gently back and forth on the narrow stage. Even his facial expression is masked by the costume’s inexplicable muzzle. “Whip! Coat! Stool!” Our Lucky has none of these items, and does not pretend to offer them. Our Pozzo’s ejaculations are played not as commands but as some kind of Tourette’s tic. “Stool!” He sits at the edge of the stage, exactly as the tramps are doing. Mind you, that could be played for laughs: “Stool!” (A beat. Lucky does not react. Pozzo sits.) But that’s not what we saw at the Hudson Theatre. And when Pozzo loses his watch — the watch he was only pretending to have — he does not bother to search the ground for it: he knows it’s not there. It was never anywhere, so how could it be there?

No props, no beats, no stage business: These are the characteristics of a play read aloud in class by schoolchildren. Often, as in the bit where the tramps balance on one leg, “doing the tree,” the actors give the impression of hurriedness: that the goal is to get through the required business as quickly as possible, so as to get on with the task of line-recital. Reeves and Winter declaim in an affected gravel reminiscent of Andy Samberg’s Nic Cage impression. Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden) declaims, exclaims, drawls, punctuates, pronounces Beckett’s every offhand “Ah” as “AAGH!” His antic delivery continually gave the audience permission to release nervous laughter. Otherwise the audience generally maintained the respectful silence of a parent suffering the children’s “Hamlet.” Three phones went off; I welcomed each as a spontaneous breath of nature, like a sudden bird chirping at the window while inside little Tommy drones “look where he has not turned, his color, and has tears inz eyes, prithee no more.”

Lucky’s speech. The typical reading is that Lucky’s speech pours out of him ecstatically, despairingly, automatically, violently. Beckett gives half a page of stage directions detailing how the others react. At the Hudson, it’s different. The tramps retreat downstage and freeze; Pozzo retreats upstage, almost off, and freezes, peering comically around the pipe. A spotlight descends on Lucky, who begins to soliloquize thoughtfully, with punctuation: “Given the existence (as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattman) of a personal God, quaquaquaqua (corkscrewing his hand in the “yada yada” gesture) with white beard, quaquaquaqua — outside time, without extension — who from the heights of divine apathia, divine athambia, divine aphasia, loves us dearly (with some exceptions, for reason unknown (the suggestion of a wink to the audience, who laugh) but time will tell), and suffers, like the divine Miranda…” This is briefly exciting: a legitimately thoughtful Lucky?! The problem is that Beckett’s text cannot sustain Thornton’s design. The text is not intended to be comprehensible. By the time he gets to “Approximately. By and large. (Slowing.) More or less. (Beat.) To the nearest decimal! (Nervous laughter from the audience.) Good measure. Round figures (a lascivious gesture) stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara…” it is clear that we have been paying our attention to the soliloquy equivalent of AI slop, and when a minute or two later he stumbles into the home stretch with an increasingly halting “the skull; the skull; in Connemara; in spite of the tennis, the skull. Alas! The stones…” we’re feeling vicarious discomfort not for Lucky but for the actor. By all means chew the scenery — give us an “I die, Horatio! (gassssp)” — but please don’t make us worry that you regret your own interpretation!

Speaking of unconventional interpretations, for me the best part of the recently closed “Pirates: The Penzance Musical” was David Hyde Pierce’s interpretation of the Major-General’s song. I’ve typically seen it played with verve: Stanley is rightly proud of his mastery of so many subjects, enjoys showing off, and the audience thrills to ride along. David Hyde Pierce played it (I choose to believe, on purpose) listlessly, as a dull recital of trivia by a boring and out-of-touch old man, making the audience think “What does any of this academic stuff have to do with military generalship?” Which of course was precisely Gilbert’s satiric point, and I think it was brilliant to play it that way for once.

Bill and Ted are aware of their parasocial obligations: the authentic Beckett lines “a million years ago, in the ’nineties” and “Back to back, like in the good old days” (air guitars) trigger applause breaks. But their Vladimir and Estragon don’t really seem comfortable with each other. They recite to the audience rather than talk tenderly to each other. And they rarely approach or touch. “Let me go!” says Vladimir, standing across the stage from Estragon. Vladimir’s gentle interrogation of the Boy is carried out at a respectable six-foot distance; nor does he stoop to the Boy’s eye level at any point. “Up, pig!” cries Pozzo, six feet from Lucky, to which Vladimir dutifully recites “You’ll kill him,” even though nobody is touching anyone. Lucky, unkicked, survives: “He can walk!” yells Pozzo at the top of his lungs like a delusionary Doctor Frankenstein, getting the biggest nervous laugh of the whole show. (He does not walk.)

Keanu Reeves (Estragon) is at least six inches taller than Alex Winter (Vladimir), which you’d think ought to make for an interesting George-and-Lennie dynamic — the taller, John-Wick-ier Gogo running to the physically smaller Didi for comfort and reassurance. But I got the impression that Reeves was just hoping he could “play short” (if he’d thought about it at all). Good direction might add two beats of silence to turn this throwaway line of Beckett’s into a real honest-to-god joke in context:

VLADIMIR: But am I heavier than you?
ESTRAGON: So you tell me. I don’t know. (Beat.) There’s an even chance. (Beat.) Or nearly.

You just have to allow enough time for the audience to realize that (1) there’s no way Winter is heavier than Reeves; (2) a “nearly even” chance is by definition less than 50/50; (3) Estragon himself is on the cusp of grasping the truth which has just slipped from his mouth; before the dialogue sails on.

At the end of each act there descends into the end of the drainage pipe a giant circle of white light — a literal “light at the end of the tunnel” indicating that the act is almost over. I heard the James Bond theme in my head every time it happened.

The play ends with Beckett’s lines: “Shall we go?” “Yes, let’s go.” The two tramps stand resolutely at the edge of the drainpipe, gazing hopefully into the center distance. They join hands. And: Lights out. Do they, in fact, go? It certainly seems like they might have.

When Estragon and Vladimir are “abusing each other” in Act 2, the final terms of abuse are “Curate! Cretin! Crritic!” This is a big laugh line; maybe a bit on the nose. In another line Beckett tells us what might be the right thing to say when someone asks if you’ve seen Bill and Ted’s “Godot” on Broadway, and how did you like it:

BOY: What am I to tell Mr. Godot, sir?
VLADIMIR: Tell him… (he hesitates) …tell him you saw me and that… (he hesitates) …that you saw me.