Readers
of this blog know of my boundless admiration for the artistry of both Ian McKellen (born 1939) and Patrick Stewart (born 1940), two of the
finest actors of their generation. So,
it was with some qualms that I learned that these two great knights of the
theater were coming to Broadway in a double act, but not in, say Othello or Becket … or even in The
Sunshine Boys or The Odd Couple
… but in two modernist plays, Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
We found
No Man’s Land to be intriguing,
despite our deep and abiding trouble with this maddeningly oblique and mannered
play. So how do McKellen and Stewart
fare with what is consider the classic
absurdist comedy?
In
Waiting for Godot, two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait in vain for the
arrival of someone named Godot. Aside
from the fact that both men have seen better days, we know nothing of them. Indeed, we know nothing of Godot, or of where
the two men are, and why they are waiting. Or even what Godot means to
them. In fact, it almost seems as if
Pinter provided a wealth of information in No Man’s Land provided compared to
what we are told by Beckett in Godot.
This, of
course, has led to endless interpretations of what the play “means” since its
first premiere in Paris in 1953. Is it
mediation on religion? On politics? Is it Freudian? Jungian?
Christian? Existential? Ethical?
Are they gay men, or is this a comment on deeply homo-social
friendships? Or is it simply surrealism
run amuck?
Samuel
Beckett (1906-1989) was not going to be any help in pointing out the meaning. He famously told Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983) that if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true
also of the other characters. He
remained remarkably closed-mouthed about what it all meant until the very
end. Indeed, in his introduction to the
play, Beckett writes: I don't know who Godot is. I don't even
know (above all don't know) if he exists. And I don't know if they believe in
him or not – those two who are waiting for him. The other two who pass by
towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony.
All I knew I showed. It's not much, but it's enough for me, by a wide margin.
I'll even say that I would have been satisfied with less. As for wanting to
find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance,
along with the program and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it. But it
must be possible ... Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, their time and their
space, I was able to know them a little, but far from the need to understand.
Maybe they owe you explanations. Let them supply it. Without me. They and I are
through with each other
We here
at The Jade Sphinx protest that I cannot see the point of it is not
exactly an artistic credo of any great worth.
Indeed, it abdicates the artist’s foremost responsibility – to represent
life and give it meaning. But, if we
want to see two great actors in a once-in-a-lifetime chance, we take it as it
comes, to quote Pinter.
One
other constant in most productions is that both Vladimir and Estragon wear
bowler hats, and I cannot help but thinking while watching Stewart and McKellen
last night that I was watching some weird synthesis of Laurel and Hardy and the worst excesses of Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953).
There is an underlying sweetness and innocence in both Vladimir and
Estragon that is extremely reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy, and if ‘the boys’
were somehow cast in Strange Interlude,
the result would be Godot. It is also a
sweetness that is sadly lacking in the mostly mean and rather vicious No Man’s
Land. Both McKellen and Stewart have a remarkable
warmth about them that infuses Godot with a humanism that is absent in the
text. I wish they had a better vehicle
to show their innermost hearts. The tenderness
they shower on one another, the simple acts of affection, the acceptance of
human frailties: these, more than anything else in the play, leave a profound
impression.
As with
No Man’s Land, McKellen somehow scores the showier part, here playing
Estragon. (Bert Lahr in the original Broadway production – and if the contrast
between McKellen and Lahr does not illustrate how malleable these characters
are, nothing does.) McKellen is a
marvel: he is completely submerged in the character and layers of old man makeup. His performance is wonderfully physical, and
his mutterings and asides are great comic business. It is also a fearlessly naked performance:
McKellen is unafraid of being frail, dirty and vague. It is a masterful bit of underplaying.
Stewart,
as Vladimir, has the lion’s share of the dialog and he is wonderful. He manages to achieve a lilt to his usual stentorian
voice – and if I’m not mistaken, he consciously or subconsciously is modeling much
of his performance on Stan Laurel
(1890-1965). This makes a great deal of
sense, and seldom has Stewart played to sweeter effect. It is Vladimir who is moved throughout the
play by compassion, empathy or outrage; he is also ribaldly funny. I never expected to see Stewart sing or dance
– both of which he does here – nor have I ever expected to see him master low
comedy slapstick. It seems this protean
actor’s range is limitless, his energy galvanic and his touch both deft and profound.
The sour
note of the evening was Shuler Hensley
(born 1967) as the barbarous Pozzo.
Hensley’s playing was broad enough to embarrass a church-basement
performance of the play. Fortunately, Billy Crudup (born 1965) as the
ironically named Lucky, shines once again.
Both Pozzo and Lucky were components Beckett threw in to provide some
kind of action in the play; however, the action is so brutal and callus as to
throw off the emotional tenor of the play … whatever that is.
I think
a more interesting approach to both plays would have been for these two great actors
to switch roles on alternate performances.
How wonderful it would’ve been to see each man’s interpretation of each
role – and where they differed. Gielgud
and Oliver did it in the 1930s, switching Mercutio and Romeo, so it’s not
impossible – perhaps someday.
For readers
able to see only one of the plays, certainly Godot is the one to catch. It has the greater warmth, is more open to interpretation,
and both actors are more evenly matched.
More importantly, they actually play off one another, whereas in No Man’s
Land, they might as well have been in separate rooms (or plays).
Godot
also left me strangely … moved. As a
play, I cannot respect it, nor can I defend it.
I certainly can’t explain it. But
these two sad ragamuffins caring for one another in an indifferent universe
cannot help but deliver a level of pathos.
Returning
again to Laurel and Hardy, a critic once wrote that the world wasn’t their
oyster, but that they were the pearl inside of it. So, too, with Patrick Stewart and Ian
McKellen in Waiting for Godot.
