"Waiting for Godot"

Last night, our group had the pleasure of seeing a production of "Waiting for Godot," an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett. Starring Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh, it's a dramatic play with comedic elements about a pair of men who are stranded in a seemingly endless landscape, where they claim to be waiting for a person named Godot. We read the play prior to seeing it, and at first I thought that it was a fairly serious play, with maybe only a couple opportunities for good laughter. However, the way that Weaving and Roxburgh as well as the other actors portrayed it revealed how much funnier the play can be! Specifically, their physical interactions and scuffles with each other as well as their vocal inflections really brought out the humor in otherwise totally bleak situations, which is very remarkable. It's also striking and creates a sense of cognitive dissonance when you contrast the humorous moments with the extremely depressing set design, consisting of a completely gray wash of color, a broken wall, and a solitary tree; perfectly establishing the lonely atmosphere of the play. This also made it fascinating to see how the audience reacted to the play and what they found humorous. Overall, the audience's reaction seemed on par with the director and actors' intentions, successfully hitting all of the intended comedic beats and getting great reactions in result. Overall, it seemed like a very succesful production, managing to bring out the light-heartedness and humor in a play that could easily be performed in a totally depressing manner. After the show was over, the cast came out to the stage for a questions-and-answer session, giving some info on the process of doing a strenuous show for so long as well as their warm-up process, which laughably apparently consists of Hugo and Richard sobbing uncontrollably in the elevator. It was great to see that they seem to still have a wonderful time performing the play, and it truly shows in their performances. It was definitely an impressive production, and easily an ideal method of performing it.



Photos from the Q&A session