Samuel Beckett’s 1953 tragicomedy about two woe-begotten men waiting by a willow tree for a mysterious figure to appear tips a delicate balance between the absurd and desolate, the funny and dreadful.
In James Macdonald’s production, the drama between Estragon (Lucian Msamati) and Vladimir (Ben Whishaw), who are yoked together in unspoken bondage as they wait for Godot, seems greater parts comedy than tragedy.
The more earthbound Estragon is slumped and gruff, his overalls half-unzipped and hanging around his hips. Vladimir is more mercurial, with trousers pulled high to his waist. They look like modern fools in urban wear (with traditional bowlers swapped for bobble hat and trendy trapper).
They are more bewildered and bereft in the first act, with an affection between them that is endearing – they gravitate towards each other and hold hands boyishly. Whishaw and Msamati work well together, sniping and yabbering because verbal distraction is always proof of continued existence in Beckett’s world.
Silence does leak in, but not often enough in the first act; you wish for more, because the actors are so good whenever the temperature drops and the comedy ebbs. With such fine dramatic actors, why not build more of this edginess?
There is no visible “country road” from Beckett’s script on Rae Smith’s set; it is a grey, razed landscape, rising up in the backdrop, as if forming the mound in which Winnie is trapped in Happy Days. Characters talk of daylight and fine weather but the sky on this set remains jet black. It could be a post-apocalyptic landscape, a version of purgatory or the aftermath of war (Beckett wrote it after the Holocaust and his work with the French resistance).
Pozzo (Jonathan Slinger), on whose land they stand, appears like a tyrant from the Shires, in a tie and with glasses dangling on a chain, alongside his whip and slave, Lucky (Tom Edden).
Their master-slave dynamic, which so resembles Hamm and Clov from Endgame (performed after), comes with harder, sharper edges as Vladimir and Estragon witness Pozzo’s apoplectic anger and Lucky’s abuse. Ironically, Lucky looks like the only classic musical clown among them, although he is the most abject and hollow-eyed.
It gets more overtly clownish in the second act, with more physical comedy and even a Laurel and Hardy-style hat-swapping routine. Between them, Vladimir and Estragon begin to look like hobos impersonating a musical hall duo. But the comedy brings flabbiness, too, the pace slackening, with not enough prickling tension between them.
When Pozzo and Lucky return, the humour verges on the Pythonesque. It is this duo, in fact, with Pozzo now blind and Lucky his tenderly willing slave, that brings the pathos.
“Do you think God sees me?” says Estragon, and this desolate line seems to be played for laughs (the audience duly laughs). The comedy works in itself, and so do the dramatic moments, but the two seem slightly disconnected.
Beckett, often considered to be the high priest of nihilistic theatre, presents a dogged hope in this play. Even when Estragon and Vladimir ostensibly give up on Godot’s arrival, and on life, they keep waiting, hoping. The lightness, and leaning into comedy, coheres with that hope and gives the play a benign spirit, but never quite plunges into the tragic.
At Theatre Royal Haymarket until 14 December
• This article was amended on 20 September 2024. An earlier version suggested that Samuel Beckett’s Endgame was written before Waiting for Godot. In fact Godot was written in 1949 and Endgame in 1957.
