Godot
with pratfalls
MIKE
NICHOLS'S much heralded production of Waiting for
Godot at New York's Lincoln Centre is based on a new
text received from Samuel Beckett in August just in
time for rehearsals. Until this new text is published,
it is hard to say just how much Beckett is responsible
for turning Godot into a tropical American comedy,
with even a joke about the election.
Certainly
comedian Robin Williams, the master improviser, broke
the promise he made in rehearsals to play Estragon
straight with no riffing. While the master of mime,
Bill Irwin, was in the middle of Lucky's intellectual
ramble, Williams apparently could restrain himself
no longer and, in the manner of a stand up comic seeking
audience participation, he ambled over to the front
row and borrowed a woman's programme. He giggled wildly
when he spotted his own name in it and then shared
the joke with Vladimir, played by Steve Martin.
The
audience's laughter seemed to inspire him to stray
even further from the text. Seeing Bill Irvin still
crazily orating, he cried at him "you're a liberal"
and the audience, recognising the allusion to Michael
Dukakis, laughed even louder. The audience seemed
to be all for the improvisations and additions to
the text. At the interval an actor behind me praised
Robin Williams for being "remarkably controlled"
and he was serious.
Beckett's
drama certainly lost its bleakness and sense of "nothingness"
with Messrs Williams and Martin enlivening it with
almost every classic comedy routine from Laurel and
Hardy slapstick to a Charlie Chaplin game with a bowler
hat. There was even a Robin Williams mocking impersonation
of military macho. Whether any of it was spontaneous
improvisation from their extensive repertoire or whether
it was all carefully rehearsed one couldn't be sure,
but Mike Nichols's original conception seemed to be
to stress the comic side by Americanising the play
with Martin and Williams in seedy clothes resembling
two of New York's homeless waiting not for Godot but
for free dinners.
Godot's
symbols and double meaning faded into the background
as this duet took over. There is nothing like broad
comedy of the Williams and Martin kind to bring a
dramatist down to earth. Beckett's pregnant pauses
and dramatic use of silence that can seem so dull
and draggy in more solemn productions was here a wonderful
excuse for matchless mime worthy of the great silent
comedies, but inevitably some of the meaning of Beckett's
fable of Everyman was lost in the fun.
Turning Beckett's feast of agnostic irony into a
series of revue sketches threatened to make Godot
no more than a vehicle for Martin's and Williams'
favourite routines. Steve Martin in a film recently
turned Cyrano de Bergerac into a contemporary American
with a long nose and he has now done much the same
with Vladimir. As Mike Nichols did not stride on stage
to demand what the hell Williams was doing, his improvisations
presumably had the director's approval. But one wonders
if there will be any negative reaction when news reaches
the author in Paris.
Manchester Guardian Weekly,
November 20, 1988, Pg. 27, , W. J. Weatherby at the
Lincoln Centre
Stars Shine In Beckett
Waiting
for Godot at the Lincoln Centre was bound to be the
hottest ticket in New York this season. Performed
in the small, 300 seat Mitzi E. Newhouse theatre by
a cast of Hollywood stars, Mike Nichols' production
is scheduled for only seven weeks to let its principals,
Steve Martin and Robin Williams, go back to earning
real money. Meanwhile, they bring the panache of their
standup comic personas to Beckett's marvellously malleable
text.
But
does the nonchalance of their hip and cynical generation
do justice to Beckett? The answer is yes, despite
liberties the author would no doubt look askance at,
since he is a notorious purist about productions of
his plays. There is only one false note, at the end
of Act one when Robin Williams as Estragon groans
unnecessarily as the lights go down on their inability
to move.
Yet
throughout the production Williams does a complete
pantomime with only slight reference to the text.
When Vladimir hurriedly exits, Williams stares after
him, laughingly lifting his leg and scratching the
ground like a dog. He picks up a steer skull and addresses
it like Hamlet or moves the jaws like a ventriloquist.
To get Lucky to stop talking he shouts out "you're
a liberal" in a mocking reference to the presidential
campaign.
After
improvising most of the long monologues in his recent
hit film, Good Morning, Vietnam, Williams could claim
he is downright restrained.
Steve
Martin turns Vladimir into a robust, familiar, slightly
bombastic character with complete fidelity to the
lines. He assumes Vladimir has some affliction that
forces him to grab his crotch at regular intervals,
but the words are sacred.
The
previous generation of American Beckett actors tended
to look emaciated and sound foreign, turning the play
into a dirge. Williams and Martin follow more in the
tradition of the great comic Bert Lahr, the first
American Estragon.
Financial Times (London), November
12, 1988, Saturday, SECTION I; The Arts; Pg. XXII,
Frank Lipsius.
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