Playwright: Samuel Beckett. At: Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr. Phone: 773-728-7529; $22-$30 Runs through: Aug. 23
It's a rare audience that doesn't have a working acquaintance with this enigmatic classicwhether in its heavy-metaphor version serving as anchor to many a repertory company subscription, or its absurdist-theatre-so-let's-clown-it-up version enamored of small post-graduate ensembles. But director Jimmy McDermott has found a third alternative to these well-worn interpretations, and the secret lies in his casting of middle-aged actors as Samuel Beckett's collection of pilgrims mired down in inertia by theirwhat? Faith? Despair? Is there any difference?
The actionsuch as it isopens in an existential void, represented by McDermott for this Redtwist production as an abandoned building, where a pair of homeless vagabonds meet daily to wait for a mysterious benefactor named Godot. This shadowy personage never keeps his appointment, but instead sends messengers bearing promises of his imminent arrival. ( "What if we dropped him?" one of the recipients asks, only to be told by his comrade, "He'd punish us." ) And so they abide, making idle chat and, on two occasions, playing host to a pompous visiting gentleman and his put-upon valet.
Consider the physical condition of these men: Estragon suffers from sore feet and restless sleep. His comrade, Vladimir, is afflicted by incontinence and bad breath. The lofty Pozzo's eyesight is failing. All of them have trouble remembering things. Dress them up in gray hair or bald pates, and speeches too frequently shrugged off by younger playersas when Vladimir observes, "We have time to grow old," or Estragon expresses frustration at having survived his many brushes with death and contemplates suicidetake on an almost Pinteresque menace.
"That passed the time." remarks Vladimir at one point, only to be rebuffed by the grumpy Estragon, "It would have passed anyway." "Yes," protests his companion, "But not as rapidly!." Assisted by the up-close vantage of their tiny storefront space, Michael Nowak, employing the slyly subtle facial twitches known in the trade as "eyebrow acting," and Bob Wilson, his deadpan face stripped of the paint he customarily wears in his capacity as Dada Dondi in the Soiree Dada troupe, deliver performances steeped in empathy-inducing intimacy, as do Noah Simon and Andrew Jessop in the more flamboyant roles of Pozzo and Lucky. Whether engaging in Marx Brothers-styled vaudeville shtick or thousand-yard staring into the empty universe that is our part in all this, together they make the two and a half hours we spend in their company pass rapidly, indeed.