Review of, Waiting for Godot (2021)

 The Odd Couples

Review of Waiting for Godot

“Why on earth are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear” 

• John Lennon, Instant Karma

I drove 10 miles down a dirt road to see a production of Waiting for Godot. The Unadilla Theatre is located on a working farm in Calais Vermont. The parking lot is next to a field filled with ancient Highland cattle. The cows are Neolithic but the plays are of our time. The sylvan backdrop is home to a number of first rate performers, directors and technicians. The weight of Beckett’s classic poses a number of challenges, even to the most prominent thespians. Those, in the know, will immediately draw comparisons to seminal productions. The play’s formidable reputation makes it  de riguer for students, even in secondary school. Before the curtain lifts many audience members will have strong opinions.  Googling  “Interpretation of Waiting for Godot” deliveries nearly 300,000 results. Kudos to Jeanne Beckwith, the local director, for daring to add her perspective on this classic, or more precisely anti-classic.

Decades before Seinfeld there was a comic work that prided itself on “nothing happening.”  In this case the laughs are deadly serious. Beckwith and the cast utilize slapstick to deliver the unsettling news that life’s fundamental questions have no definitive answers. The English publisher added the subtitle “a tragicomedy in two acts” to soften the blow. (the play was originally in French)  The first production was in Paris during the beginning of the Cold War. Nazis had occupied the theater 7 years prior. The universal threat of nuclear annihilation was also less than a decade old. Certainly this would be an ideal grist-mill to ponder questions of how and why we exist. But no one would tolerate a screed about the self-evident evils of fascism and unbridled Capitalism, as the French say, “Capitalisme sauvage.” Enter the zany odd couples who spend over two hours in two acts… doing exactly nothing… and everything.

Estragon (Matthew Grant Winston) and Vladimir (Donny Osman) are the primary protagonists. Think Abbot and Costello or Dean and Jerry, two comedic teams that dominated pre-TV entertainment at the time Godot’s creation. Winston captures Estragon’s complaining, egocentric manner. He is entertaining within the confines of entertainment. Real life Estragons are tiresome, and try the patience of even the most caring teacher, companion, stranger, neighbor..… Osman projects empathy and understanding. He’s not a push-over. In fact much of the time his is pushing back from his companion’s whining.  He nails Vladimir’s sincerity and curiosity. Those qualities are coupled with a searing desire to know the inner workings of his own moral compass. Estragon is hungry. Vladimir wonders about hunger, amongst many many other things. The two of them spark a sing-song meditation on…. Why? Estragon drones on and Vladimir philosophizes. These are fringe characters who have center stage in a void. They inhabit a desert with single scraggly tree. There is no back-story. Oddly their disposition sparks uncomfortable reminders for any audience member who has ever been in any kind of relationship with a spouse, a co-worker, a child, an adult, an elderly person, a baby, a boss, a stranger, a traveling companion… i.e. everyone. There are constant arguments, affirmations, pronouncements, denouncements over everything and nothing. They are united/divided in an appointment with the mythic Mr. Godot. They rhapsodize about, and dread, the encounter. Think of your average Christian realizing the second coming is at hand. The duo pass the time waiting for the shoe to drop or axe to fall.  Thankfully Osman and Winston have chemistry that results in laugher and reflection.Their interactions are pleasing, and self-sustaining, even before they meet Pozzo and Lucky. The second duo are a startling counterpart to our jesting anti-heroes. There is more brimstone than treacle in the new arrivals.

If Estragon and Vladimir are best friends, or an old married couple, Pozzo is a tyrant who bullies his enslaved captive. Only in this universe would the that person have the moniker “Lucky.” His life is humiliating grunt-work at the hands of the slave-driver. Lucy is a human cart-horse who must perform. Pozzo literally has him dancing to amuse his new audience. His movements are bad, but the physiological damage is worse. He is asked to reveal his inner-thoughts.  The heretofore monosyllabic Lucky expounds, or more precisely explodes. Tom Murphy does a superb job of letting-rip a verbal barrage of inchoate religious/philosophical musings. He becomes a radio tuned in-between a PBS and AM talk. It is the only speech by this character, but it makes an impression… and a point. 

What did you expect? A lifetime of being repressed yields a darker, condensed version of the gibberish spoken by Vlad and Estagon. The old duo is alarmed by the outburst and silences Lucky. They preferred the old soft-shoe to the slave muttering on about God. Leave that to Vladimir.  Lucky’s absurdity hits close to home. Pozzo, the master, is more straightforward, stomping on his hat and yelling, “there’s an end to his thinking!” Clarke Jordan does an excellent job channeling the insolence of the rich and powerful. Even in the Second Act, when the tycoon is blind and pleads for help, the schadenfreude feels appropriate. Vladimir, on the other hand, evokes the pain in seeing people forever locked in a suspended animation of epiphany without the means to act. He knows “habit is the great deadener” and yet he clings the pursuit of Godot. In this respect Beckett’s masterpiece has the conventionality of having the audience empathize with a play’s central character. At the same time the author is undermining established theatrical norms. The traditional framework of a three act play is based on: a problem is presented, the situation is analyzed and a solution is found. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quip, “There are no second acts in American lives”, points to the impatience of our culture. We rush to comfortable answers without doing the hard work of weighing options.  Beckett believes there are no third acts. Life is a perpetual second act. There isn’t even a comfortable first act. Perhaps this radicalism was sparked by a linear three act play produced a decade and a half earlier in New Jersey. It was masked in conventional structure but the last act was, literally, out of this world. 

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town might seem a world away from Parisian avant-garde theater. Strangely both author’s were gripped by the crisis of absurdity. We live our lives on a treadmill of routine that blinds us to the magic of life. There is a direct line from the callow teenage Emily Webb in her eternal New Hampshire gravesite and the world-weary philosophical outcast Vladimir in his expansive apocalyptic desert. It is easy to empathize with the young widowed-bride. Vladimir is more of a challenge. Donny Osman’s superb showmanship is up to the task. The audience can identify with his struggle despite the starkness of his surroundings and the un-admirable, though well-rendered, cast-mates. He doesn’t cave to the transactional convenience of Pozzo. He feels for Lucky’s plight. He is a true friend and guide to the hapless Estragon. It takes a real performer to stoke the coals of tenderness in this cold, ashen landscape. Perhaps the showman could have, at times, bent to the slowness of an intimate moment. It is a tough needle to thread as the production might stray into preachy sentimentality. They avoid this trap and rely on a distinctly un-mawkish “commedia dell’arte” sensibility.  These performances were heartfelt and not simply a forum to vent philosophical razors. Even the smallest details were geared to illustrate the play’s central theme of finding life’s meaning in the morass of societal dullness. The Boy, performed with wonderful innocence by Case Phinney, deliveries the news of Godot’s consecutive no-shows. Osman’s rage is set-up by the quiet dead-pan of Phinney’s negation of history. It is the timeless struggle against every bureaucracy and corporate phone-tree. The “man” never ceases to remind you that you and your memory are null and void. Their life’s mission to to make sure you don’t believe you exist. Your job, if you are up to it, is to fight being categorized as meaningless.

It is disquieting to think of Vladimir on the Godot-treadmill of absurd belief. Knowing the world is absurd is distinct from believing in absurdities. Vladimir believes both. He retains a comic view of the world but is mired in a tragic enslavement precluding a “happy ending.” There is no ambiguousness about the joy of artisans willing to pay tribute to his struggle. This is an act of defiance against our sea of troubles. Even the sylvan hills of rural Vermont aren’t immune from changing weather, unstable economics and the deadly pandemic. And yet, in this remote corner, there are those who take the time to do the hard work of reminding us that all is not lost. Deep in the forest, amongst the ancient cattle, we take a few hours to reflect by watching those who are truly lost. As Vladimir says: “Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come” I would replace the last phrase with: we are glad this Godot came. Kudos to the Unadilla Theatre for hosting this production. Unadilla is an Iroquois word meaning “council place” or “place of meeting.” How perfect. This is our modern “city on a hill” guarding us against the great deadener of news delivered through screens. The real life experience of watching real people struggle. We need to make the pilgrimage more often. No more waiting.

Review of The Green Knight (2021)

 

The Knight Shift

“And anyone who ever played a part, they wouldn’t turn around and hate it.”

• Lou Reed, Sweet Jane

“I was born into this life and it is a great honor to serve my country and the Queen.”

• Prince Harry, Letter of Resignation

The Green Knight is rooted in the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What kind of producer would bet on a 13th century text as the basis for a feature film? Answer: someone who hires David Lowery as the writer/director. Lowery has a knack for giving new varnish to old stories. Bonnie and Clyde become quarreling high schoolers from an Everly Brothers’ song. A Ghost Story is a horror film remade as an Andy Warhol art movie. What will he do with a 800 year old tale of chivalric romance? Answer: the pomp and pageantry give way to existential questions. The knight in shining armor is a contemporary, disenfranchised, cellphone-bound, teenager. Behind the role-playing lurks self-doubt and skepticism. The monster becomes the question: what’s the point of slaying the dragon?

The dragon in this tale is the Green Knight, a Hulk-like figure who seems to embody the forest. His physicality is an amalgamation of old growth trees graphed onto a super-hero’s body. His opponent is the privileged screw-up, Gawain. The feckless teen is catapulted into stardom by his ambitious mother, the sister of the king. The mighty knights of the roundtable are too intimidated by the Green Monster so the callow Gawain accepts the challenge. The mother ensures the slight young man’s victory over this beast. The catch is that, after a year, the new knight must participate in a return match in a far off chapel.

The feckless rich kid is now a sanctioned hero replete with weapons, clothing and blessings of the church and high society. Old ways die hard and he fritters-away twelve months with drinking buddies and a beautiful lowly commoner. There is a wonderful scene in which she speaks all the words everyone wishes he would say. He certainly feels attachment but demurs for more established prospects. This is a tone-deaf careerist rather than a chivalric hero. His quest confirms our worst suspicions. Briefly into the journey he loses his horse, weapons and sacred tokens to a band of unimposing criminal scavengers. Losing his stallion is particularly noteworthy as the word “chivalry” is based on the French word for horse (cheval). These knights were inseparable from their animals. He is redeemed through set-piece encounters with various women who find him enthralling. They give him charms and tokens. A green belt for eternal protection and the sacred axe, which he needs for his encounter with the Green Knight. They come at a price but our transactional hero has the audacity to wonder, “What’s in it for me?” One of the princesses mercilessly chides him: Knights don’t ask the price of their services. He learns the art of accepting “gifts.” But therein lies the heart of Sir Gawain’s cardinal sin. He is a crass yuppie cognizant of “price” but oblivious to “value.” Every move is rooted in the calculus of advancement, not a code of chivalry. His passion is tempered by security. Boldness shows through at times, but it is the stuff of adrenaline, rather than blood. He encounters a majestic trail of giants lumbering across the mountains. He asks to ride on one of their shoulders. When the massive hand is outstretched Gawain flees in terror. No doubt mom would have approved: that looks too dangerous! Think of your prospects.

Lowery knows the timeless motifs of the ambitious mother and prodigal son. He also is aware that the supposed prudishness of the Middle Ages is a myth as fictitious as a real-life Green Knight. Noble women were strong, powerful and sexually confident. Knights were more akin to State-sanctioned marauders. The real code of chivalry was a device created by those in power to keep a check on ambitious men with weapons. (Historian Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, has a wonderful series of videos on life in the Middle Ages). Lowery is a master of uncloaking the truth of a past that is ever-present. This is a fairy tale with the grit of our current world beset with Lermontov’s ambiguous “heroes.” Behind the magical-realism of sorceress’, giants, spells, witchcraft, knights, oaths, quests… is the darkness of sacrificing one’s integrity for mammon and standing. Only in this tale would the hero knight give away the token of his love’s affection to a seductress who happens to be his host’s wife. It is more The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills than The Legend of King Arthur. The denouement is equally unsettling. When it comes to winning the crown, he has Henry VIII’s family values. Perhaps “wins” is the wrong word. He deserves the crown and its never-ending parade of pain. The betrayed lover, fabricated bravery, stolen child and dead son are not the stuff of “happily ever after.” There is an inevitability to rebelling subjects and a burning castle. In the end he metaphorically joins fellow king Richard II on the ground talking of graves, worms and epitaphs… but does he?

Lowery puts a final twist on his twisted dream by borrowing from the most cynical of American writers, Ambrose Bierce. Like the Confederate Soldier in An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, Gawain has a reprieve. Unlike the civil war counterpart his alternative life is the nightmare of actually being a king. At one point when the Green Knight raises his axe Gawain asks if this is “it”? Isn’t there more to the game of life? The Green Knight is befuddled. The embodiment of natural knowledge looks at the young man and embarrassingly admits… this is it. Our hero is, in the Buddhist sense, “truly in the moment.”. He puts away the protective charms. He bows his head and expects the blow. It is his first genuine act of bravery and maturity. He sees the broader picture: being king and not being king are… the same. The Green Knight salutes the “road to Damascus moment” by joking, “Now off with your head.” This is even worse than an actual blow. The elder Knight knows: you will always lose, but heroes fight anyway.

One could imagine the grammatical symbol for Chivalric Romance as an exclamation point, marking brave deeds and heroic triumphs. Lowery’s The Green Knight is the question mark at the end of “to be or not to be?” The performances are a perfect balance to the quirky sensibility of this unorthodox tale that frames an uncomfortable question. The actors are sexy, empathetic and precisely anti-heroic. The set and costuming are enthralling, exquisite without overspilling into Disney-like fantasy. The director’s mastery of the historical aspects of the period and mythology is exacting. The overall effect is to land in the uncanny valley of escapist fantasy. Lowery has the wherewithalto capture our imaginations. We fall into his dream. Strangely there is an unsettling quality in his looking glass. We expect uplifting dreams and torrid nightmares, but how to digest existential ambivalence in the context of a magical fantasy? Our knights in shinning armor aren’t supposed to wonder if the jousting match is covered by insurance. Their realizations can’t be the pointlessness of conventional heroism. We needed more of the Green Knight’s sagacity of acceptance. There is deep wisdom behind all the Hulk-theatrics that bend’s the heroic framework. It is interesting that in the original poem the Green Knight himself is a disguised relative. The entire “game” is revealed as a intra-familial life lesson. Lowery retains the spirit of the ancient scribes. That Zeitgeist is expressed by the cynical iconoclast, Mr. Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary: “Existence n. A transient, horrible, fantastic dream, wherein is nothing yet all things do seem: From which we’re wakened by a friendly nudge of our bedfellow Death, and cry: “Oh Fudge!”” Lowery’s quest might be disquieting for those expecting true horror or real fantasy. There’s the rub. The holy grail might be a beaten old terra-cotta mug, rather than a shining golden goblet.