Waiting for Godot – review

Waiting for Godot is a play whose co-ordinates rarely alter. There will be tramps engaged in circular conversations; there will be an overwhelming sense of futility; there will be a tree. Yet Ian Brown's production, in association with touring company Talawa , is the first time Samuel Beckett 's play has been performed by an all-black cast . On one level, this ought to be supremely irrelevant. Beckett wrote about the human condition in an abstract fashion that transcended race or creed: there is little reason why an all-black Waiting for Godot should be any more insightful than, say, an all-female one. Yet Brown's concept chips away the carapace of over-familiarity. Vladimir and Estragon become a pair of elderly Caribbeans shooting the breeze ("Nuttin' to be done"); or possibly a pair of broken-down bluesmen standing at a crossroads. Inevitably, certain lines come loaded with additional significance. Estragon declares, "We've lost our rights." To which his companion wearily replies, "We got rid of them." In this reading, the play becomes a drama about subjugation. The pair endure routine beatings by "the usual lot", while Pozzo's domination of Lucky with a rope and whip could hardly be more explicit. There's a danger that pinning the play down to a single meaning might diminish its overall relevance, yet the actors remain humorously aware of the fact. Any temptation to over-read every colour reference is nicely exploded when Patrick Robinson's Estragon expresses a preference for pink radishes over black ones. "This is becoming really insignificant," responds Jeffery Kissoon 's Vladimir, with a wry grin that elicits a patter of applause. Kissoon and Robinson brilliantly bicker in the manner of an old married couple. Cornell S John's journey from arrogance to blindness places Pozzo on the tragic axis of Oedipus and the Duke of Gloucester; while Guy Burgess's single speech, delivered in a thick Brummie accent, makes Lucky's outpouring of gibberish seem like a short, independent Beckett play in itself. Whatever the pros and cons of presenting Waiting for Godot as an ethnic experiment, the least you can say is that it passes the time – which would have passed anyway, though probably not as quickly.