THEATER REVIEW : Spark Is Missing in South Coast’s ‘Godot’

South Coast Repertory’s revival of “Waiting for Godot” would seem to have everything going for it: consummate actors, top-notch designers and a director not only sensitive to nuance but privy to Samuel Beckett’s personal notes for staging his mid-century masterwork.

Given these advantages, the production should have scintillated. Yet on opening night Friday, despite all the talent deployed on the SCR Second Stage, this “Godot” was too often punctilious in execution and flat in tone. Theatergoers hoping for something more inspired were liable to feel a nagging sense of disappointment.

Crucially missing from the production was the very resonance that gives the play its amplitude. As an existential clown show about the catastrophe of the human condition, Beckett’s text elevates Didi (Hal Landon Jr.) and Gogo (Richard Doyle) from ordinary tramps to universal Everymen. Both are considerably funnier and bleaker on paper than what we got in performance.

Landon and Doyle delivered such narrowly literal portrayals of these bowler-hatted, foul-smelling, slapstick lowlifes that they almost succeeded in eclipsing the larger significance of their roles. They seemed to be acting completely on the surface, with no implied subtext whatsoever, presumably according to Martin Benson’s direction.

*

Didi and Gogo eat, pace, argue, embrace and, with the usual gallows humor, consider suicide while waiting for the never-arriving Godot. (The name rhymes with Otto in this production. Benson, claiming authenticity, wants his actors to pronounce it just as Beckett did.) Typically, however, the melancholy loneliness that is one of the play’s hallmarks escapes them totally. Although they speak of their anguish and desperation, we aren’t touched. As for the dry cosmic ironies of their customary vaudeville banter, they too seem strangely muted.

It’s hard to believe the downsizing of Didi and Gogo is anything but deliberate, and yet the shrinkage results in a striking dislocation. When the pair encounters Pozzo (Ron Boussom), the pompous slave master who is on his way to the market to sell his exhausted slave, Lucky (Don Took), Pozzo doesn’t just overshadow them. He virtually obliterates them.

Boussom, with shaved head, bearded chin and flashing eyes, gives a bravura performance in a showy role full of stentorian bluster. Suddenly “Waiting for Godot” is all about the brutal Pozzo. He’s much more interesting than Didi and Gogo. Too much so, it turns out, because his departure is a huge letdown. Besides taking his slave with him, he takes most of the evening’s entertainment as well.

Took brings Lucky briefly to incandescent life with an enigmatic, outsized aria of near-operatic fury. Otherwise, Lucky is heard gasping in a state of more or less suspended animation, a tall, reed-thin figure sagging under the weight of Pozzo’s bags. In white pancake makeup, Took looks like a catatonic creature from a sunless world.

The spare set, painted bluish gray, has an abstract look and consists of wood-planked flooring, a rock and a bare Y-shaped tree that sprouts three leaves in the second act. Lighting is purposely harsh for bright day. But, when evening is required, a palette of crepuscular colors comes into play, and the moon rises with cartoonish glee. The realistic costumes are also impeccable.

* Through April 11 at SCR Second Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Performances Tuesdays to Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. $23 to $32. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.