Until the curtain comes down. Rather like life. The famed Gate Theatre of Dublin is touring the U.S. with a wonderfully minimalist production of this famed Irish play. Designed by Louis le Brocquy, Ireland's most distinguished artist, it is a stark tree and a rock against an ever-changing sky and it is perfection. Near perfect too are the performances, by Johnny Murphy as Estragon, he of the ill-fitting boots and smelly feet, and Barry McGovern as Vladimir of the failing prostate and garlic breath.
Understatement serves the play surprisingly well.
Alan Stanford is the tyrannical Pozzo, played as a boorish British gentleman of a couple of centuries ago, and Stephen Brennan is Lucky, his slave. It is Pozzo, seeming to see a little better in his blindness, who sums it all up in the second act. We give birth astride our grave. Beckett presents as cogent a picture of the existential condition as you're ever going to get. There is, as one of the characters observes, no lack of void, so might as well fill it up.