Waiting for Godot (White Light Festival) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Watching Garry Hynes’s highly stylized and very funny staging of this classic of modern literature, I found myself transported to Saturday mornings with Looney Tunes from my childhood...What you may find yourself missing is the deeply touching familiarity of Gogo and Didi’s relationship...Still, for theatergoers new to Beckett, I can’t imagine a better introduction than this lucid and entertaining cartoon of a show. That its comic exaggeration can feel a bit distancing may be for the best."
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"The production excels at finding the humor in the mundane; it pierces with a gracious, poignant truth of friendship. Haynes mines the piece for its quiet moments and visceral existential angst and vaudeville farce. She firmly redefines our notion of tragic daily rituals while finding the necessary, vital humor...There's immense heart to this production...Hynes direction is assured, filled with comedic grace and the brittle tension of daily grind."
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“Hynes' production has an artfully cartooned quality all its own...The actors seem to leap from one comic conceit to another with such skill that some of the play's darker, deeper notes are obscured. But, in the later passages, a genuine and profound sense of loss emerges...For all its comic invention, Hynes' approach may not be to all tastes...In any case, it's a fine chance...to contemplate the very real synchronicity between Beckett's viewpoint and black humor."
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"What I hadn’t been prepared for was her eye-popping casting of tall, pencil-thin Marty Rea as Vladimir and of shorter, inevitably wider Aaron Monaghan as Estragon...Both Rea and Monaghan are first-rate physical actors...Monaghan and Rea, with Hynes, have discovered funny ways not to be able to maintain their balance. They’re constantly brimming with risible behaviors...It’s Beckett who transforms the confused stand-up communications into profound existential humor."
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"A very fine staging...A truly radiant interpretation of Beckett’s challenging work. The closely meshed performances by Rea and Monaghan possess a personal warmth and vitality that brightens the existential desolation of Beckett’s classic...Somehow they are able to be as funny as they are poignant, and that’s quite an achievement...Garry Hynes, the director, successfully infuses Beckett’s bleak study in existence with a warm, wonderful sense of humor and eternal life."
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"Ms. Hynes has the cast at full speed emphasizing slapstick and employing stylized poses and gestures...Movement director Nick Winston’s efforts are accomplished if overdone. The plethora of gags and set up punchline recitation gets laughs at the expense of emotional resonance...This 'Waiting for Godot' is overall pleasing without making much of an impact."
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“Never have I experienced ‘Waiting for Godot’ in such a brand new way than I did with director Hynes’ interpretation...By far the funniest version I’ve seen and it hits closest to home with Beckett’s text. The production fully embraces the possibilities of comedy, both through text and movement in this otherwise very quiet play. The result is deeply satisfying. It galvanizes an unsettling, surreal, and entertaining version of ‘Godot’.”
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"Combines the play’s signature existentialist angst with slapstick comedy for a brilliant and affecting synthesis of philosophical and physical absurdism...Profound and ridiculous, Druid’s stellar production of 'Waiting for Godot' is a testament to the exceptional talents of the director, actors, and design team, and provides a reaffirmation of the power of Theater of the Absurd in making us think about our inescapable mortality and questioning the purpose of our existence."
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"Damn close to perfect. Garry Hynes's meticulous direction exquisitely balances the pain and humor of Beckett's heartbreakingly funny play...'Godot' hits particularly hard this time around, with the rich bully Pozzo, full of bluster and in desperate need of constant flattery, being a scarily effective stand-in for our 45th president."
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"Under the direction of The Druid Theatre Company’s acclaimed director, Garry Hynes, this somewhat languid production with her very able Druid Ensemble does nothing unexpected yet everything is to the delight of the audience as she adheres to Beckett’s detailed instructions...In her otherwise sensitive rendition of 'Godot,' I found the pace and comic exchanges at times to be hindered when actors delivered lines out to the audience rather than to each other."
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"This 'Godot' feels both authentic to Beckett’s vision and never earthbound. The four actors in the play showcase their comedic chops, their ponderous waiting, and their general fascination with the deeper themes...Hynes brings authenticity to the text by never steering far from Beckett’s vision... She is able to focus on the simplicity of the story-less story and let the characters jump around different genres, highlighting the comedy and also allowing quick flashes of drama to seep in."
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"Every version seems more or less the same...Not to take anything away from the estimable, affectionate staging...but I wager that a revisit is essential only for those who’ve never had a 'Godot' experience...Hynes successfully steers her leading players to divergent and yet symbiotic characterizations...They do uphold those Beckett standards of yore, these two physically agile comic actors, engaged in existential stand-up."
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"The show is fun. As entertaining as any 'Godot' I’ve seen. A blast. Actual belly laughs. And I’m not talking invasive vaudevillian clowning, which has its place in the world but is a curse in this play, but deeper amusements based in human truth...This is a quartet of masterful performances — close to textually perfect, as far as I could tell, and you can’t mess around with Beckett...Hynes’ casting plays up the physical contrasts, as great comic duos have done for years."
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"A superb addition to the 'Godot' canon. Director Garry Hynes hasn't wasted a single word of the iconic play. In her steady hands, the bleak poetry of every line is apparent. Each silence is exactly measured. Hynes understands the fusion of comedy and tragedy in Beckett's work, and she has cast a quartet of actors who take to the challenging language like they were born to it."
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"When performed with the type of care and precision on stage in this exquisite production, the work still passes the time...The sublime cast of protean performers each reveal a range of skills, combining styles from the classical to the campy, the silly to the serious, the lyrical to the laid-back, all while maintaining a consistent reality...Hynes brings a good degree of patience to this show...She’s not afraid to let time feel slower for a bit before speeding it back up again."
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"Hynes’s finely calibrated, often ferociously comic revival...puts both the pleasure and the pain into the endless waiting...Didi and Gogo’s endless waiting takes on extra poignancy in the light of contemporary political developments...Hynes finds both the psychic pain and the physical comedy in this situation...There are moments when the slapstick comedy is a little too broad, but there’s no argument that the evening’s desperate, jaunty despair is heartbreakingly entertaining."
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"Rarely have Estragon’s sad reflections that they might be better off apart seemed more poignant, or Vladimir’s responses more like those of an affectionate but eccentric carer, making the best of things...With the rich physicality of Hynes’s production adding an extra layer of pure, simple clowning comedy to an immensely rich evening of theatre, this 'Waiting For Godot' affirms the play’s status as a spare and eloquent miracle of 20th-century art."
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"Watching the marvelous production...you might find yourself thinking how cluttered and limited most conventional plays can seem by comparison...For me, this time, the centerpiece of the play was the one we usually forget about: the pair of Pozzo interludes...Rory Nolan's Pozzo and Garrett Lombard's Lucky are indispensable to the success of these passages...Similarly, the physicality Marty Rea and Aaron Monaghan bring to Didi and Gogo might make a silent 'Godot' possible."
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"'Waiting for Godot' thrills us as it flattens boxcars of aspirations about dignity and destiny into music-hall merriment...Director Garry Hynes. Her take on the seminal anti-tragedy is richly orthodox, respecting the physical and gallows humor while never undercutting the pathos of a friendship that trembles on the edge of amnesia...The performances were nothing less than powerfully persuasive, enough so that a little despair goes too long a way."
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"Hynes, with her luminous cast...unearth a treasure-trove of comedy in this seminal piece. 'Godot' is not played for laughs; it is entertaining because of the emotional truth underlying the humor...The composition of all the visual elements: costume, lighting and scenic design is as appealing as a Rembrandt portrait...Beckett is the archetypal playwright of uncertainty. He is the ideal author for this perplexing era. What better time to hear those famous lines 'I can’t go on. I’ll go on.'"
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"The Galway company has tackled the equivalent of a theatrical Mount Everest, and they have done it with a kind of reverence paid to a master of twentieth-century’s drama...The production has the pedigree that makes it a show that all serious theatre-goers should see...The play can be very funny, and Monaghan and Rea work beautifully on stage together...Beckett’s poetry sings, and playing his music demands following the author-as-composer’s score. Druid has done just that."
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