'Waiting for Godot' at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket

Samuel Beckett's 1953 play 'Waiting for Godot' was one of the West End’s hot tickets last year; its pairing of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart proving so popular that every seat for every performance was sold. Luckily for the likes of me it has been revived for an additional eleven weeks this year, still with McKellen as Estragon (or Gogo) but now with Roger Rees as Vladimir (or Didi). Tickets now seem to be rather less in demand, which worked out beautifully as I was able to procure Royal Circle tickets for the princely sum of £20 each. Used as I am to sitting in the Upper Circle or the Balcony, I found this whole experience rather novel: going to see a play and not being several stories above the action? Being able to stretch my legs out? Sitting in a seat with a padded back? What luxury! I'd better not get used to it, or things could get expensive.

Anyway, to the play. It's an odd one, this. I can understand why many people don't like it, seeing as the entire plot can be described as 'two old tramps wait for a man called Godot to turn up'. That isn't a summary, by the way, it's all that happens. Most tales can be said to have a beginning, a middle and an end; 'Waiting for Godot' cannot. We simply watch Gogo and Didi over two days, two days that are essentially identical. Then it stops. The audience doesn't need to see any more; if there were to be a third day it would simply be the same as the first two, and so there is no point in carrying on.

Put like this, it all sounds terribly dull, but somehow, and I'm not exactly sure why, it isn't. It definitely helps that the two tramps are quite entertaining characters who keep a veneer of comedy to hide the tragedy of their lives. They are rather like a musical double-act that has fallen on hard times, an impression reinforced by the ruined-theatre setting (the script originally called for a country road) and the little dances and hat-switching routines that they perform. Neither managed to completely conceal their deep-seated despair, however. For Gogo this manifests as grumpiness, resignation and thoughts of suicide. Didi, on the other hand, expresses his discontent in animated monologues and restlessness.

The pair mostly seem to pass the time with brief, intense conversations and by trading insults. Each day this interaction is interrupted by the arrival of the rich, larger than life Pozzo and his slave Lucky. Pozzo, who is played with great gusto by Matthew Kelly, has a rather strange relationship with Ronald Pickup’s dutifully obedient Lucky. The two are linked by a rope that runs around the latter’s neck, and although Pozzo is clearly the dominant one it would seem that neither could do without the other, much as is the case for Gogo and Didi. Pickup has a wonderfully crumpled old face and an impressive head of long, white hair that is probably a wig but that I wish was his own. Most of the time he is left to stand, eyes to the ground, as the action (such as it is) carries on about him. He is not without his moment of glory, however. This comes when he is asked to dance, and then to think, at which point he lets out an incredible, barely-comprehensible monologue that is really rather exhausting to listen to.

There are many themes that could be said to run through 'Waiting for Godot', from the religious to the political, from the existential to the absurd. Many trees worth of paper has been consumed in its analysis, a process that I find rather mystifying especially given that even Beckett didn't seem too clear on what it was about. For me, it was a great evening out at the theatre seeing an interesting, impeccably-acted play in which not a lot happened. That's all it was, and in my mind that's all it needs to be. I would thoroughly recommend it.

Waiting for Godot

'An Inspector Calls' at Wyndham's Theatre

'An Inspector Calls' is an extremely famous play, long a staple of school English Literature syllabuses. However, for my GCSE course I was lumbered with other things, and so although I could name JB Priestley as the play’s author with barely a second thought, I knew nothing about its plot. Yes, there is a rather large hint in the title that an Inspector may be involved, and it's a good bet that he will get up to some inspectoring, but beyond that I had not a clue. I wasn't about to spoil it all by looking up what happens on Wikipedia, and so booking tickets became therefore a slightly risky business. Would it all end up a bit Agatha Christie-esque? (I saw 'The 39 Steps' a couple of years ago, and although mildly entertaining I wouldn't rush out to see anything similar.) As it turned out, I couldn't get cheap tickets for much else and so the decision was made for me. Luckily, 'An Inspector Calls' is hardly your standard murder mystery fare; in fact it's really rather good.

The first thing to say about this revival of Stephen Daldry’s 1992 production is that it looks amazing. The atmosphere is wonderfully gloomy due to the liberal use of smoke, restrained use of lighting and the presence of drably-clothed street urchins. Not only that, but it rains! Yes, water really does come tumbling down, right there on the stage, so that the actors’ clothes get wet and mucky. Marvellous.

In stark contrast to this doom-laden greyness on the outside are the bright reds and golds adorning the rich family's house that occupies the bulk of the right-hand side of the stage. This house is quite a contraption; the walls swing open to reveal a gaudy dining room, a set of railings is magically transformed into a usable stairway. Its best trick is revealed about two thirds of the way in, and I won't give away the surprise, but suffice to say they must have got through rather a lot of crockery during the course of this run.

With a set like this the actors have to try pretty hard not to be upstaged by it, and fortunately by and large they succeed. The actor playing the Inspector was sometimes inaudible from our lofty position in the balcony, but otherwise his calm approach punctuated by flashes of rage worked well. The by turns haughty and hysterical Mrs Sybil Birling had a commanding presence, dominating even that of her fat and booming husband Arthur (a former Lord Mayor of Brumley, don't you know).

'An Inspector Calls' has an interesting parallel with the last play I saw at Wyndham's Theatre, 'Madame de Sade', in that the central character in each never appears on stage. In the latter play it is the Marquis de Sade who, despite being imprisoned far away, is the subject of all conversations; in the former it is a young working-class woman, Eva Smith, who cannot possibly appear as she killed herself earlier that day (or did she?). It is this piece of information that the inspector arrives at the Birling residence to divulge. Initially it appears to them to be irrelevant, but as he proceeds with his questioning the family members learn one by one that they are implicated in the sorry affair.

It is easy to see why this play is so popular with examination boards. In fact at times it feels as though the central themes of responsibility and common humanity are being shoved down the audience members’ throats. However, even if Priestley's socialist message is painfully obvious it is still very interesting to see the family members’ contrasting reactions to their implied guilt, and it makes us wonder how we ourselves would react in such a situation. Less obvious is the nature of the inspector himself. Is there something supernatural about him? Personally I would like to think not, but it is certainly an interesting question, and I have yet to come up with a workable alternative. But anyway, things get rather boring if we know all the answers, don't they?

An Inspector Calls

Picture is of Sir Charles Wyndham, the founder of Wyndham's Theatre.