“WAITING FOR GODOT IS A RUBBISH PLAY.” So declared Keith McNally in an Instagram post that caught my eye. “I urge you not to see Waiting for Godot.” Accompanying the statement was an image of the two stars who headlined this fall’s production at Broadway’s Hudson Theater, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. The play is the latest in what regular theatergoers and visiting tourists may have started to recognize as a recurring theme in New York’s theater scene: an overwhelming number of big-name Hollywood screen actors dotting their playbills. These players are here to make their bones and increase their prestige as “true” thespians, often by attaching themselves to tired and familiar productions.
This has certainly not been lost on McNally. McNally, one of the city’s favorite cultural commentators, is much more than a restaurateur. The bestselling author of I Regret Almost Everything began his career in the 1960s as an actor in London and, when he came to New York in the 1970s, his plan was to continue that trade and become a filmmaker as well. Instead, he found himself in the restaurant industry, where he helped define the burgeoning downtown scene when he opened the Odeon. In an interview with The Spectator, it became clear that he’s still got his finger on Broadway’s pulse.
‘The only reason Broadway producers stage Waiting for Godot is greed. They know they can make a killing’
“The trouble with Waiting for Godot is it doesn’t transcend its time,” McNally tells me. “Godot was written in 1948, a period when Europe was experiencing a severe post-world war sense of futility and emptiness, which the play reflects in nihilistic abundance. When first reading Godot in 1969, the play shocked and provoked me. Reading it again, years later, it had become toothless. The play was too rooted in the historical context of post-World War Two’s existential angst to have much relevance in the 21st century. These days everybody – at least the average theatergoer – knows that life is essentially meaningless, and the play’s essentially preaching to the converted.
“On the other hand, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, another existentialist play about two men trapped in a cycle of waiting without purpose, has the same sharp impact today as it did when written in 1967. And it still works because it’s a far richer play. But it’s also less commercial because to fully understand it you must have a fair grasp of Hamlet. Rosencrantz is a multidimensional play and, by comparison, Waiting for Godot is a one-trick pony… watching Waiting for Godot today is like watching a band play their old hits.” Why, then, do producers continue to run it?
“The only reason why Broadway producers stage Waiting for Godot is greed. They know they can make a killing if they hire a film star like Keanu Reeves to play Estragon.” Reeves and Winter are not the first film stars to jump from Hollywood to Manhattan for the play. A major 2013 revival starred Nathan Lane and John Goodman; in 2009, it was Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. “The reason why film actors like Godot – besides money – is because it enhances their reputation as an actor. Even when serious actors like Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart play Estragon and Vladimir on Broadway, they’re hired only because they’ve become world famous after being in Lord of the Rings and Star Trek.”
But Broadway’s Hollywood infection is not just limited to Godot. Of course, it’s nothing new to have a few movie stars tread the boards each year, but lately they are everywhere, both on and off Broadway. Over the next several months, I count nearly two dozen productions that feature Hollywood names – there’s Dog Day Afternoon starring Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach; Proof with Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle; Jane Krakowski taking over the main role in Oh, Mary!; and perennial Broadway/Hollywood hybrid star Nathan Lane joining Laurie Metcalf in a new production of Death of a Salesman. Even Daniel Radcliffe is back, yet again, for Every Brilliant Thing, after appearing in a run of productions on Broadway and the West End including Merrily We Roll Along and Equus. The list goes on. The most egregious money-grab could be Simon Rich’s All Out, a companion play to his earlier All In, both of which feature a rotating cast of famous comedians and actors playing various roles each night. You might have to shell out for two or three performances for the full treatment.
“By and large, the hiring of ‘big names’ to star in Broadway plays is on the increase, and it’s having a dreadful effect on American theater,” McNally says.
“George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck and Denzel Washington’s Othello were the highest-grossing plays on Broadway last year. Washington’s play averaged around $3 million a week; Clooney’s around $4 million. These shows not only made Clooney and Washington obscenely rich, they also solidified star power on Broadway. And in the process, they sucked vast amounts of money from theatergoers.” The average Broadway ticket is already pricey at around $134; the cost of a ticket for these big-name productions is even higher.
“The average ticket for the Clooney play was $320; the Washington play $400. The fact that Broadway plays starring famous film actors made the most money is a terrible omen for Broadway’s future,” says McNally. And those averages underplay how expensive these tickets get. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who grabbed them early, the top tickets for those shows were going for a staggering $825 and $897, respectively.
A nitpicker might point out that these plays didn’t actually make “the most money” of all productions last year, but that’s little more than a technicality. Clooney and Washington’s plays had extremely limited runs: Good Night, and Good Luck put on 99 performances, Othello 119. Despite that, the former was the 13th highest earner at $48.2 million and the latter 15th at $46.7 million. They were easily the top-grossing shows per performance.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. “Luckily, there are still some very good, serious plays succeeding on Broadway without huge stars. Sophocles’ Oedipus [at Studio 54] is one of them,” McNally says. True enough – though even this production happens to star Mark Strong, who although not a household name, is all the same a well-known film and television actor.
Given his love of the stage,I wonder whether producing theater could be McNally’s next project
I asked McNally for some of his best memories of New York theater. Here he pivoted and instead remembered fondly the early 1970s in London, “an exceptionally fertile period in the English theater scene,” as he puts it. “I remember seeing great new plays by John Osborne, David Storey, Edward Bond and Christopher Hampton. Jonathan Miller’s productions of Danton’s Death and The School for Scandal at the National Theatre were very good. Miller’s 1970 Merchant of Venice with Laurence Olivier as Shylock was a revelation. Setting the play in the late 19th century, Miller coaxed Olivier to play Shylock not as the typical Fagin-like ‘stage Jew’ but as a greed-driven businessman who just happens to be Jewish. It was a brilliant interpretation.”
But, I press, surely there must be one great Broadway play that sticks out in your memory? “David Mamet’s 1977 production of American Buffalo with Robert Duvall as Teach and John Savage as Bobby stands out as the most memorable play I’ve seen on Broadway. It was sensational.”
These happy memories therefore tend to include big-screen actors, but big-screen actors intentionally used. The point isn’t to ban them from the stage, but to deploy them better. Indeed, McNally seems to confirm this when I ask him what the last “great” play he saw was. He answers with Giant, which just finished its run on the West End and dramatizes a chapter of Roald Dahl’s life. The play stars John Lithgow as Dahl.
Given his background in filmmaking, his obvious literary chops and his love of the stage, I wonder whether producing theater could be McNally’s next project. He stops me with an adamant “no.” Still, he’s got one grand idea for making Broadway great again: “Build a National Theater in New York and run it along similar lines to London’s National Theatre,” he offers.
Perhaps Mayor Mamdani, a grown-up theater kid if there ever was one, can add this to his agenda.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s January 19, 2026 World edition.
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