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.

Heartbreak House (2013 Unadilla Theater, VT)

Heartfelt House

I went to see a production of “Heartbreak House” in a rural theater in the middle of the Vermont countryside.  Topical social satire rarely stands the test of time. George Bernard Shaw’s 90 year old indictment of the English ruling class surprises in that it still has currency. Shaw captured the dissonance of a mannered old world slipping into the tumult of a ruling class aristocracy without manners and boundaries.   Shaw’s original audience, suffering the new horror of WW I’s mechanized warfare, would have recognized the young ingenue’s metamorphosis into a callus operator.  No doubt even the most priggish blue-blood must have felt the blinders slipping away into a brave new world.  Henry James and Edith Wharton spent entire tombs in which the denouement reveals a woman’s honor has been compromised. Shaw speeds the plow and the young woman is undone, so to speak, half way through the first act. Whereas earlier writers might have had the wounded leading lady crawl into the shadows, Shaw’s heroine charges towards the limelight.  The supporting cast is equally novel in their approach to social grace: all three of the established couples have open relations and the patriarch is married to someone of a different race. In fact  the only character who has a conventional matrimonial union schemes to have his only daughter married off to one of his contemporaries. In fact he makes no bones about the fact that his friend is a scoundrel.  When confronted with the darkness of his actions his answer is simple: my friend has a great deal of money.  Such brazen honesty would have been a ticket out of polite society in the Gilded Age.... but not in the upcoming Jazz age. This post WW I era is similar to our own time in terms of the shift of social norms.  I was born when blacks and women were officially sanctioned second class citizens; homosexuals were criminals, telephone answering machines did not exist and copying machines were a new invention. Someone who was 30 in 1919, when “Heartbreak House” opened, would have grown up witnessing the following ‘new‘ inventions: the electric grid, the telephone and the automobile.  The effects on society were equally dramatic: women, in most Western Democracies, were granted the vote and the ‘Downton Abbey’ set was feeling the ever-present push of the merchant class. In this paradigm shifting moment Shaw had something to say... and it still has resonance for the internet age.

Shaw had an unconventional personal life: born of modest means he married an heiress who shared his passion for socialism and women’s rights.  His wife refused to have sex which led Shaw to have a number of affairs with married women but it is unclear if any of his relationships were consummated. In addition to being a playwright he was an author and a formidable music and theater critic.  “Heartbreak House” was actually written before the war but he held off production until after hostilities had ceased. This was not someone too concerned with offending popular sensibilities so one might attribute the delay to a difficulty in finding a producer.  The original title of the play was ‘A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes’.  It would have been an mouthful but it does deliver the timbre of the piece: if Oscar Wilde had been touched with Chekov’s sense of irony. The result forces the audience into wry smiles and brief laughter rather than guffaws. The characters are equally repulsive and likable. The challenge for the cast is that there are no real heroes or villains which demands an intense level of focus in order to create the lifeblood of all good theater: empathy. The Unadilla cast did an admirable job of embodying the strange melange of brimstone and treacle. This arts organization operates on shoestring budget and utilizes some non-professional performers.  Even amidst these constraints the result is admirable. It is not easy to mix actors with varying degrees of experience especially in an intricate ensemble production. Kudos to the people on the front lines but it is also important to acknowledge the visionaries behind the scenes.  In a world obsessed with money and liability there exists a maverick with the grit and determination to build two theaters in the middle of nowhere. I have lived in the neighboring town for years and became completely lost in the dense forest occasionally punctuated with open pasture.  It is 5 miles from the nearest paved road. Audience members, even with packed houses, are outnumbered by the sheep and highland cattle in the surrounding fields. No doubt G. B. Shaw would have found a kindred spirit with such pioneers. This was a man who abhorred conventionality and the pursuit of money in equal measure.  His head-strong lack of regard for accepted wisdom has, at times, diminished his legacy. His embrace of Stalin combined with his fondness for eugenics is problematic for the contemporary reader. Nevertheless his fierce advocacy for women’s rights and his unending dedication to helping the underclass, are extraordinary for a man of his time.  Inevitably one must draw comparisons to the other Anglo-Irish playwright/breaker of societal norms: Oscar Wilde. They were two years apart in age.

If there is anyone who seems ‘heroic’ in Heartbreak House it is the old sea-captain. This character embodies Shaw’s own hardscrabble musings.  His harsh truism come with a tinge of  resignation. This isn’t Henry V. This is Richard II with Richard III’s swagger.  It should be noted that author possess the modern sense of irony by saddling his ‘superman’ with a serious drinking problem and the name “Shotover”; in addition he has such blind narcism that he fails to even acknowledge his opponents. Actually the adversaries are created out of whole-cloth with the actual person in front of him transforming into a bemused stand-in.  His daughter is not his daughter - until she is. The singer’s father is always a complete stranger with a similar name. Note that Capt. Shotover, in allegiance to the modern day survivalists, has his dynamite... just in case. He understands the world and knows he has lost... but he isn’t defeated. At this point it is interesting to compare his witticisms with Oscar Wilde’s:

G. B. Shaw: Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
-Capt. Shotover, Heartbreak House

Oscar Wilde: Men become old, but they never become good.
 -Duchess of Berwick, “Lady Windermere's Fan”

G. B. Shaw: When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
-Hesione Hushabye, Heartbreak House

Oscar Wilde: Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
- Algernon Moncrieff,  The Importance of Being Earnest

In short: Shaw is clever and funny;  Wilde is funny and clever. The difference in their writing reflects the mirror images of the men’s personal habits: Shaw was a teetotaling vegan while Wilde was, well, wild. Shaw died a celebrated figure in the 1950s, six years shy of his 100th birthday. Wilde died broke at the turn of the century after fleeing England due to a sex scandal. Shaw’s rage at the ruling class is studied and pointed. Wilde had a different approach: “if you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you”. Ironically they killed him despite his good humor.  And Shaw survived despite his more direct lines of attack. In the end “Heartbreak House” has resonance but lacks tenderness. The kind of work that comes from someone who can give wonderful lectures on humanity - but never consummates a passionate relationship. Perhaps a better title would have been “Brain-break House”. This is not to say Shaw is cold - he is a keen observer. Unfortunately he failed to be a ‘player’ in manner of Wilde. The latter’s ability to genuinely feel the heartbreak makes for a stronger connection with the audience. Fortunately the players at the Unadilla had strong enough feeling to carry the day. Their hearts were in the right place... it showed. Perhaps they should consider walking on the Wilde-side. 

Donny Osman's Cages (2012 Lost Nation Theater, VT)

Donny Osman - FTW

“Town Meeting” is annual gathering of Vermonters that sets the local government agenda for the coming year. In one of my first experiences at this event (I am from “away”) the delinquent tax collector was being publicly skewered for “not being tough enough”. The criticism was warranted. The tone was mean-spirited. Compounding the problem was the inarticulateness of the office holder and the relative fluidity of the verbal barrages by the pack of angry taxpayers. An older gentleman rose and took command. He immediately pointed to the difficulty of the position and the perils of being cruel to those who were down on their luck. One should not assume that every person who is behind on payments is a scoundrel and every civil servant who founders in delivering the cash is a weak kneed bleeding heart. While listening I felt ashamed that I had failed to rise to the occasion. Who was this man?

The answer came years later. Recently I attended an autobiographical one man show featuring Donny Osman; not - Donny Osmond. But the irony that Mr. Osman should share a similar name to a teenage bubble-gum star of the 1970s goes hand in hand with Mr. Osman’s world view. God often embodies opposites: God can be cruel/funny. As a mere mortal one should acknowledge life’s hardship but one has a responsibility to God, community and family never to forget to laugh. Mr. Osman has arranged a series of stories from a full life that has involved the theater, politics and family. The structure of the piece involves Mr. Osman sitting at a desk and loosely reading from notes and occasionally rising while a guitarist strums and picks - not so much music as appropriate collaboratory support. It is a mark of the musician’s talent that the focus stays on Mr. Osman and his tales. Ironically Mr. Osman’s tone is a dual mixture of apology and defiance. These are stories from his life: “they might not make much sense to you - but they are what makes me who I am.” There is a reference to “cages”. Everyone is emotionally placed in boxes and separated against their will. Life is, in a sense, a process of escape.

The stories he tells continue the theme of “duality”. They are heartbreaking/hilarious, fun/painful, silly/serious..... There are many deeply personal biographical moments - but once again the opposite is also true: Mr. Osman keeps his own counsel while bearing his soul. This is especially the case in sketches he makes of his parents. These were formidable people. His mother was a member of SNCC, a major civil rights organization. It is easy at this point in our history to underestimate the courage it would take to actively participate in the cause of unblemished righteousness. One might see grainy images of Martin Luther King reciting “I Had a Dream” and conclude that every person with a conscious would have wanted to bear witness. Truth be told: many moderates considered King a radical and others were unwilling to be associated with “trouble”. (The NY Times wrote an interesting article on the anniversary of the march commenting on the fact that on the day itself Washington DC was nervously gripped by fear; not celebration.) In short, Donny had a very brave outspoken mother. Her choice of spouse was equally dynamic. The senior Mr. Osman was a push-cart peddler who rose to own and operate a famous New York discount store. In one of the highlights of the performance the son speaks of the father handling a vendor. The man wanted to try to sell Donny’s father some goods at a high price. The senior Mr. Osman firmly explained that “he is an undertaker” and that these goods are, metaphorically speaking in terms of profit potential, “already dead”. This man must realize that if he wants to sell the goods it will be at a loss. This is the harshness of the market delivered by someone WITHOUT MALICE. I emphasize this as it is central to the father’s legacy. He was a businessman who never forgot that his measure was in the respect felt by his family, community and customers. The bottom line could never be found in a bank statement.

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the performance was when Donny describes his mother’s passing. She committed suicide with the aid of clandestine medical staff after receiving a terminal diagnosis after her husband’s death. Donny and his brother bore witness. Whatever one’s personal views on end of life decisions it is important to acknowledge the boldness of this very public disclosure. It would be easy in our “reality TV” world to attribute this to the need for “sensationalization”. In Donny’s case the opposite is true. This revelation comes as a parable in his mother’s never-ending fight for social justice. Mr. Osman lets it be known that he believes strongly in personal end of life decisions being made by the patient . One sense the steely determination of his father with the vendor when he says “I did not know the names of the people who assisted my mother... but even if I did I wouldn’t tell you”.

One of the first stories involves a Vermont neighbor who helped Donny and his family when they first arrived. He was a hard drinking, trailer-living, porno-watching, gun totting family man. One senses Donny’s repulsion/fascination. They were friends; or more accurately “friendly”; people who could rely on one another in the custom of the country. Cities have conversation. Rural areas have dependable neighbors. The neighbors’ wife would look after Donny’s house when his family traveled. Donny recalls that his family returned from a trip and the local paper wanted his comment on the shooting. The shooting? It turns out the neighbor shot his wife in the head in front of their children. Donny let slip that this was one of three murderers he had encountered since re-locating to a sylvan ideal.

Donny tells us that his decision to move out of New York wasn’t motivated by any “back to the land” romanticism. He thought farming looked like “too much work”. All joking aside Mr. Osman never really reveals what prompted his pulling up stakes and settling, for four decades, in Vermont. It brought to mind Prospero’s penultimate lines at the closing of the Tempest:

And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.


Mortality is certainly a central focus of Mr. Osman’s work but it is Prospero’s opaqueness that creates the parallel. What about the other two thoughts? The irony of Mr. Osman’s autobiography is that it becomes hard to know what he thinks; although it is clear portrait of what he believes is right. The disconnect might lie in other matters that he unveils: he is a hypochondriac but has real medical conditions, he is a politician but has disdain for vulgar popularism, he needs constant re-assurance but is very much his own man.... At heart is the strange contradiction of a private person needing to escape the comfortable narcissism of self and “come clean”.

There are three central figures in Mr. Osman’s life who are barely mentioned: his wife, his brother and his son. Donny’s spouse is referenced as being the bedrock of his recovery from depression. The veracity of her courage fails to play dramatically. Who is she? The same is true for the missing son and scantly referenced brother. Obviously it is impossible to catalog all close relationships in a dramatic summation however some color on these specters might have illuminated other characters and actions. For example the afore-mentioned killer returns to greet Donny after his manslaughter term is served. One senses the surprise/repulsion but it is difficult to know what Donny would do if the murderer chose to re-kindle the friendship. There are also a strange “blank” in understanding his relationship with his parents. The respect and love is unquestioned.... but did they get along? Donny recalls: “everyone loved talking with my father” - this is distinct from “I loved talking to my father”. Donny describes the macabre moments waiting the two hours for the mother’s “medical assistants” to make their full exit. Once again the exasperation of having to be a part of this grim ritual is real.... but is he angry at his mother for creating this burden? Is their guilt at feeling rage? Is everything washed away by fulfilling his role as being the dutiful son? There is a great deal of expectation involved in having such dynamic role models - was this a factor in the choice of leaving New York? What was their reaction to his working in the theater? There is a long history of loving parents being skeptical of a stage career. In fact one of the first “talking” motion pictures, “The Jazz Singer”, documents the struggle of an artist shackled by parents well-intentioned, but misguided, concern. One wonders how a serious social activist and self-made retail magnate would react to having a son who is a professional clown? Had these wonderful parents placed Donny in their cage of expectations?

On a mechanical level the structure of the piece works against his being fully candid. By clearly delineating himself as the storyteller he is taking on the burden of facing the every-present judgement of the audience - not merely for a performance - but for a life’s work. “Cages” could be “set free” if Mr. Osman embodied the various characters he presents. Speak in the voice of his mother and father or even take on his own character as almost a separate persona. There are glimmers of Osman’s ability to inhabit the protagonists - brief shouts and jesters - we need more of this showing and less telling.

These technical suggestion should not take away from what Donny has created - this is a life’s work. There is an expression that young internet users employ when they wish to recognize an amazing performance - be it in sports, acting, class.... “FTW” stand for “For the Win”. The origin of this “shout out” is obscure but the idea is to exclaim “this is the best!” or “Amazing!”. Ironically this acronym had almost the exact opposite meaning for an earlier generation. During the turbulent 1960s some people would use “FTW” to mean “Fuck the World”... but it is important not to dwell on the negative... that could lead to darkness and depression. We have a responsibly to laugh and cheer. Remember the Book of Psalms while contemplating to the Book of Job. Life is hard... but good. Donny Osman - FTW!