Waiting for Godot
Cockpit Theatre, London

Stuart Simpson

There are too many fringe productions that are influenced by Beckett, and too few that show any understanding of his theatre. Sparse sets, Laurel and Hardy antics, quotidian snippets of dialogue that imply significance, but really have none.

These devices are often used in fringe productions as an attempt to disguise the fact that the show only concerns those taking part (usually just the person who wrote the one-man show). There seems to be an idea that to be odd and idiosyncratic is to be creative, an idea that has it's flipside in the notion that if someone is creative they're probably either on drugs, clinically depressed or just plain mad.

Beckett was notoriously prescriptive about his theatre; not just in his language but also his stage directions. You can be sure that if an actor scratches his nose on stage, it's in the script. There is no room in a Beckett performance for an idle word or action; there is no room for self-indulgence. Beckett was not concerned with himself, but with what is common to us all. Almost in answer to our modern notion of what is creative the Godot Company - a theatre company set up primarily to perform Beckett's works, with John Calder (Beckett's publisher) as a founding member - presents us with a performance that is absurd but also utterly humane and totally sane in its conception.

Vladimir and Estragon could all to easily be seen as a reflection of our confused state, in a world that is even more confused than we are. Vladimir is at times pitiable in his confusion and his suffering, but the strength of Tim Hardy's performance is to show Vladimir at times to be almost a fatherly figure. Despite his rags and the nonsense he talks, Vladimir rises above our pity and condescension. When Hardy/Vladimir turns to the audience and notes that 'at me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows nothing', we are reminded not to be to so sure of ourselves, not to laugh so easily at the idea of this poor man 'waiting for Godot'. Vladimir and Estragon may seem fools at times, but as Vladimir astutely recognises at a moment of crisis 'at this place, at this moment in time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not.'

The most absurd 'scene' in Waiting for Godot must surely be Lucky and his thinking hat, and a better performance of Lucky's thoughts could hardly be wished for. Lucky is instructed to put on his thinking hat, and think, for the entertainment of Vladimir and Estragon. Sergio Amigo's thick Spanish accent but clear and forceful enunciation, along with his bulging eyes and intense expression, would be enough to terrify the stoutest witness. Needless to say, as Lucky begins to think, Estragon and Vladimir run in terror, desperately trying to hide behind the scenery (which is as sparse as the stereotype a Beckett play conjures up); behind the small tree or the rock and even behind each other. Lucky for the most part is concerned with his thinking, but catching sight of the pair he'll make a step or too in their direction, and they'll panic and scarper.

Lucky throughout the entire play is at the beck and call of his master Pozzo, who has a rope around his servant's neck. Lucky is ordered to think just as moments before he was ordered to dance. There is nothing creative, nothing insightful in Lucky's thought: it is regimented, assured and inhuman, it is the thought that takes control of Lucky. This scene seems to be a condemnation of thought and rationality itself - and what could be more terrifying or more absurd, and what could be more restrictive to our humanity and our notion of creativity?

But it would be a mistake to think this implies there is something uncontrolled or uncontrollable about the creative mind that wrote this play. The example of Beckett, perhaps more than anyone, rubbishes the notion that to be creative we need to 'free ourselves' from the constraints of the normal, that to be creative we need to be the kind of person who will cut off an ear or be driven to suicide or madness by our passion.

The lines written for Lucky's thoughts were written by the same hand and in the same way as the apparently spontaneous and free-flowing dialogue that was written for Estragon and Vladimir. There is hardly a line in the text that doesn't include an instruction to the actor - He moves away from Vladimir/looking at his neck/grudgingly/Pozzo jerks the rope - Lucky looks at Pozzo etc. Waiting for Godot was written by a man in total control, who knew exactly what he was doing. Beckett's example suggests that to be creative means to be sane, rational, disciplined and in control.

Waiting for Godot is at the Cockpit Theatre till 28 February. For further dates, see here.

Stuart Simpson is commissioning editor of Culture Wars.

The notion that creativity is in some way associated with a mind that is irrational, damaged or on the edge is one we hope to explore further on Culture Wars with reviews and articles on a selection of contemporary films, biographies, theatre and novels that address this theme. Among these will be reviews of the recently released portrayal of the life of Sylvia Plath (Sylvia) as well as the award winning film A Beautiful Mind, the newly published biography of Baudelaire (subtitled A Portrait of the Artist as a Drug Addict), the noted study of Romanticism by Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination, and other examples of the theme taken from contemporary theatre and fiction.