Waiting for godot

Waiting for Godot is a church service for suicidal unbelievers. Those who attend the rite on a regular basis find themselves wondering how boring it will be this time. A bit boring, of course, but there are laughs to be had in James Macdonald’s production. The set resembles a Gazan bombsite with a tree-stump stranded in a pit of ashen rubble. Didi is played as a goofy English toff by Ben Whishaw who supplied the voice of Paddington in the movies. The bear is back.

Godot Is a Woman opens with three tramps standing on a bare stage beneath a solitary upright. This isn’t Samuel Beckett’s famous drama about a pair of vagrants, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait in vain for a mysterious visitor. This is a spoof in which a trio of actors (two female, one non-binary) seek a licence to perform the script that Beckett insisted must be played by male actors only. The upright prop is a telephone box and the thesps are trying to get through to the Beckett estate. They’re answered by a robotic female voice. ‘You are 9,124th in the call queue.’ A burst of inane lift music fills the air and the actors pass the time by performing a comic dance routine that lasts 15 minutes.