Waiting for Godot (Warten auf Godot)
by Samuel Beckett
"Vladimir: So, shall we go?
Estragon: Let’s go!
(They do not move)."
A country road. A tree. Evening. Two acts, two times two people: Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky. Sometimes a boy passes by. Nothing happens. And there is – as the first line of Beckett’s text states, “nothing to be done”. What remains is waiting. And talking. As if there were no other way of reassuring oneself of one’s own existence. As if the repetitive rituals of talking served the purpose of making the world and the mere passing of time more bearable. Playing with words. Saving oneself.
Dimiter Gotscheff – the great Bulgarian director, who made his mark on European theatre with his unique mix of laconicism, humour, poetry and inscrutability – died during preliminary work on his production of 'Waiting for Godot'. It was the wish of his actors, in particular, to bring the production to the stage: as an affectionate homage.
***
Samuel Finzi and Wolfram Koch are rewareded the Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring 2014 for their parts in 'Waiting for Godot'
***
'Waiting for Godot' was selected for the Berlin Theatertreffen 2015 as one of the ten most remarkable productions of the last season.
Estragon: Let’s go!
(They do not move)."
A country road. A tree. Evening. Two acts, two times two people: Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky. Sometimes a boy passes by. Nothing happens. And there is – as the first line of Beckett’s text states, “nothing to be done”. What remains is waiting. And talking. As if there were no other way of reassuring oneself of one’s own existence. As if the repetitive rituals of talking served the purpose of making the world and the mere passing of time more bearable. Playing with words. Saving oneself.
Dimiter Gotscheff – the great Bulgarian director, who made his mark on European theatre with his unique mix of laconicism, humour, poetry and inscrutability – died during preliminary work on his production of 'Waiting for Godot'. It was the wish of his actors, in particular, to bring the production to the stage: as an affectionate homage.
***
Samuel Finzi and Wolfram Koch are rewareded the Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring 2014 for their parts in 'Waiting for Godot'
***
'Waiting for Godot' was selected for the Berlin Theatertreffen 2015 as one of the ten most remarkable productions of the last season.
Director Ivan Panteleev
Set & Costumes Mark Lammert
Sounddesign Martin Person
Dramaturgy Claus Caesar
Berlin-Premiere September 28, 2014
A co-production with Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen
A co-production with Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen
Wolfram KochEstragon
Samuel FinziWladimir
Andreas DöhlerLucky
Christian GrashofPozzo
When Pozzo and Lucky enter the stage as master and servant – Christian Grashof, dextrous to his fingertips, and the convincingly badgered Andreas Döhler – and Lucky begins to think on command (“Think, you bastard!”) in a shilly-shallying travesty of knowledegability, the audience’s laughter begins to falter until – with a speech, spelling out the play’s background, on the millions of deaths caused by the Holocaust – they are struck dumb. (...)
Panteleev’s clownesque production is extremely respectful, in that it accurately extracts the Beckettian wit owed to the knowledge that we have nothing better than this wit, save perhaps the few embraces that our souls can tolerate. One example of this is where Finzi and Koch try to swap coat for jacket. The only props left over from earlier productions are the clothes on their backs, with the exception of an enormous piece of pink material, which poor Lucky folds and folds. No more suitcase, no hanging rope around Lucky’s neck. A lighting pole has to serve as a tree. “What’s with the weeping willow?” asks Estragon. “Will have died. Past mourning.” This is true, and untrue at the same time. This play is a play not least of all about theatre, because those who are waiting, while they wait, pretend that they have something to say. Time and again, it works incredibly well, even without words, when finger-clicking pantomime performance segues into a brilliant mime show of table tennis, golf, polo and chess. That we do all these things only to play for time, in the face of terrible nothingness, was seldom laughed at with such cheerfulness and high spirits, or so justifiability.
When Pozzo and Lucky enter the stage as master and servant – Christian Grashof, dextrous to his fingertips, and the convincingly badgered Andreas Döhler – and Lucky begins to think on command (“Think, you bastard!”) in a shilly-shallying travesty of knowledegability, the audience’s laughter begins to falter until – with a speech, spelling out the play’s background, on the millions of deaths caused by the Holocaust – they are struck dumb. (...)
Panteleev’s clownesque production is extremely respectful, in that it accurately extracts the Beckettian wit owed to the knowledge that we have nothing better than this wit, save perhaps the few embraces that our souls can tolerate. One example of this is where Finzi and Koch try to swap coat for jacket. The only props left over from earlier productions are the clothes on their backs, with the exception of an enormous piece of pink material, which poor Lucky folds and folds. No more suitcase, no hanging rope around Lucky’s neck. A lighting pole has to serve as a tree. “What’s with the weeping willow?” asks Estragon. “Will have died. Past mourning.” This is true, and untrue at the same time.
In his cleverly reduced production, director Ivan Panteleev incorporates many quotations from the Beckett cosmos. With this reserved interpretation, he is close to Beckett, who once directed Godot at the Schiller Theater, liberating it of all profundity and pushing the acting into the limelight. Stage and costume designer Mark Lammert has placed a square ramp on stage, and in the centre there is a funnel out of which the actors appear – and sometimes threaten to disappear. Godot doesn’t appear on this occasion either, but seldom has waiting been so entertaining as it is in this belated, brilliant opening to the season at the Deutsches Theater. Finzi and Koch plumb the depths of this play’s comedy in all its nuances. The duo plays a pantomimic tennis match that segues into a kaleidoscope of sports. They acrobatically swap jacket and coat. Talk, rave, and argue. Because the waiting has to be filled somehow. Because even the hanging rope is missing and they’re too old to leap from the Eiffel Tower: “No one would let us up there these days”.
In his cleverly reduced production, director Ivan Panteleev incorporates many quotations from the Beckett cosmos. With this reserved interpretation, he is close to Beckett, who once directed Godot at the Schiller Theater, liberating it of all profundity and pushing the acting into the limelight. Stage and costume designer Mark Lammert has placed a square ramp on stage, and in the centre there is a funnel out of which the actors appear – and sometimes threaten to disappear. Godot doesn’t appear on this occasion either, but seldom has waiting been so entertaining as it is in this belated, brilliant opening to the season at the Deutsches Theater.