It's not wrong exactly - Lane can usually count on it getting bursts of ticket-buyer laughter - but it isn't right enough either. What is also on view, unsurprisingly, is Lane's signature comic disgust. It may be that Page decided he didn't want to go heavy on the morose qualities Vladimir and Estragon share - or that he considered them a Beckettian cliché - but without the constant undercurrent of debilitating depression, Godot risks becoming a work about a pair of nags having at one another for far too long.Īlthough Lane's opening line is "Nothing to be done" - uttered while he tries to remove a tight boot - there is an immediate feistiness to the actor's portrayal. Much of the dropped-trousers element is present here but as the two-act exercise in existential angst unfolds, the profound despair in the face of dimming hope is missing. For example, with its forlorn protagonists Vladimir and Estragon (Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane) clinging to one another at the same time as they try each other's frayed patience, loud echoes can be heard of Shakespeare's King Lear when the self-deposed monarch and blinded adviser Gloucester meet on the heath.Īn ideal production of Beckett's play - labeled a "tragicomedy" and intrinsically funnier than is often thought - should achieve a healthy balance between the Bard and the bawdy. Take Samuel Beckett's 1954 classic, Waiting for Godot, now being given a disappointing revival at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Studio 54 under the direction of Anthony Page. No matter how magnificent a play may be, it always reveals discernible influences.
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