At Long Last, a ‘Godot’ Worth Waiting For

A theatergoer can spend half a lifetime seeing fairly good, well-intentioned productions of a masterwork. These venture only so far into the recesses of a play’s greatness. They tend to leave us peering into the cave from the outside, wondering what it really looks like in there.

That’s how it has been for me regarding Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” the 1949 tragicomedy (premiering in Paris four years later) about a couple of tramps. The most unassuming classic of the post-World War II age, Beckett’s stripped-down vaudeville show says all a dramatist can say--by way of delicate, raffish, musically precise language--about time, about the space between human beings and what one character calls our “private nightmares.”

But here, finally, is a “Godot” worth its wait in gold.

Continuing through the weekend at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, the Gate Theatre of Dublin’s staging comes the closest to any I’ve seen to activating Beckett’s dread and wonder. It makes those ineffable qualities tangible and often hilarious, and then sends us home mysteriously changed somehow, transported, shaken up a bit. At intermission, a rapt young girl talked with her mother about how “creepy” the appearance of Godot’s slave boy was, and how funnily a certain bit of physical comedy played by Didi and Gogo came off. That’s the play in a nutshell, if you’re lucky enough to see a fine and full production. It’s sight gags, floating on an unseen cloud of . . . what? Mortality? Everything we must take on faith, including faith itself, a reason for existence?

The Gate Theatre is internationally famous for its Beckett festivals. Gate artistic director Michael Colgan is nearing completion on a vast project: a filmed compendium (featuring acting and direction by everyone from the late John Gielgud to Harold Pinter to Julianne Moore) of Beckett’s entire stage career.

The Gate’s “Godot” first hit America in 1996. The current U.S. tour closes Sunday in Los Angeles. Alas, the L.A. engagement doesn’t include “Krapp’s Last Tape,” as it has on other stops. (What are we, chopped sprouts?) But this “Godot” is reason enough to celebrate. And yes, “celebrate” is the right word for this particular interpretation of a play prone, at least in this country, to drab, timid non-interpretation.

We’re dealing with a distinctly Irish version of this very Irish play. Barry McGovern plays Vladimir, or “Didi.” Johnny Murphy is Estragon, or “Gogo,” his longtime companion, sometime nemesis and fellow traveler on life’s highway, a road favoring the likes of landowner Pozzo (Alan Stanford), whose slave, Lucky (Stephen Brennan), is left holding the bags.

McGovern and Murphy--the former long, tall, beardless and gravel-voiced, the latter shorter, bearded, preoccupied with his ill-fitting shoes--deliver clearly Irish characterizations. This Pozzo clearly is British, which provides a political overlay to this production. It works, primarily because Stanford’s Pozzo keeps us off-guard, throwing in weirdly delicate line readings (he and the boys do wonderful things with the word “adieu”) amid the general loutishness.

Director Walter D. Asmus hits pay dirt with the very first image. As the lights come up, we’re shown a copper-colored sky above a spare stage. Murphy’s face remains in the dark, the actor seated on a stone, his head in shadow. McGovern faces the rear of the stage, eyeing Beckett’s famous scraggly tree. It’s a sustained pause, this opening moment, and throughout the evening Asmus and company finesse such distillations of stillness--moments of panic, stasis, confusion--so crucial to the playing of “Godot.”

This isn’t a radical rethinking of an established classic. It’s simply a vital, organic traditional production. Designer Louis le Brocquy’s tree resembles (perhaps too literal-mindedly) a crucifix, one of the script’s touchstones. But his eerie moon, which rises twice in the play, is subtle and simple genius, as is the intensity of the lighting cue greeting the two appearances of Dan Colley as the unnamed boy, in the employ of the man who never arrives.

“I can’t go on like this,” says Gogo.

“That’s what you think,” replies Didi. Beckett’s stoic wit and hard, beautiful wisdom have been exceedingly well-served by the Gate Theatre personnel.

* “Waiting for Godot,” Freud Playhouse, Macgowan Hall, UCLA, Westwood (adjacent parking, UCLA Lot 3, Sunset Boulevard at Hilgard Avenue). Today and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $40 ($9 for full-time UCLA students). (310) 825-2101. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Barry McGovern: Vladimir

Johnny Murphy: Estragon

Alan Stanford: Pozzo

Stephen Brennan: Lucky

Dan Colley: Boy

Written by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Walter D. Asmus. Scenic and costume designer Louis le Brocquy. Lighting by Rupert Murray.