Theatre review by Steve Bennett

Waiting For Waiting For Godot is one of those ‘why-didn’t-anyone-think-of that-before’ ideas: a simple pitch that opens a realm of possibilities. Two understudies kill time in the grubby dressing room that entraps them as they wait for a salvation that may never come – a chance to appear to take to the stage in Waiting For Godot. 

The parallels between their situation and Vladimir and Estragon’s couldn’t be more blatant. There is mysterious figure for whom they await, The Director, and the co-dependent pair kill time with   rituals, circular conversations and vaudeville routines (There’s No Business Like Show Business  gets a run-out) while being dogged by paranoia and isolation.

Even their names are close: Ester and Val. Simon Day plays the veteran Ester: The older, more pretentious of the pair, pronouncing on the art of Thespis. That he’s still an understudy is, he insists, of no concern, emphasising pompously that he was drawn to the art of acting  for ‘creative purpose, not material wealth’ and clinging on to the received wisdom that ‘there are no shortcuts, we must all suffer for our art. We must pay our dues’. James Marlowe’s Val is more impatient for an agent, for fame, but both cling to the mantra that ‘something could happen’ to thrust them into the spotlight.

Their pomposity over the art of acting is shattered when assistant stage manager Laura (Laura Kirkman) pops in to tell us it’s easier than they’re making it out to be… though we probably don’t need her common-sense  intervention to know that. 

However strong the central conceit, Waiting For Waiting For Godot, receiving its London premiere three years after its award-winning off-Broadway debut at the New York Fringe Festival, doesn’t really deliver on that comic or dramatic promise, with their philosophising on the nature of acting seeming like one big knowing in-joke.

Written by Dave Hanson, who’s worked on Inside Amy Schumer and Chelsea Lately, much of the dialogue is in a very theatrical set-up/punchline format, a poor imitation of Samuel Beckett’s original ambiguous, pregnant tone. And despite solid, if unspectacular, individual performances, there’s little chemistry between the actors, the mentor-protege relationship feeling as forced as the conversation.

There are some decent set-pieces – such as Ester’s preposterous vocal exercises, pretentious mispronunciations, and pantomiming as a gorilla/Marlon Brando hybrid – plus a smattering of strong lines (‘acting is difficult; actors shouldn't be’), but it doesn’t amount to much more than showboating. When the pair get stuck in an infinite loop of ‘You’re just repeating what I’m saying again and again’, it’s as juvenile and irritating as you’d expect. Director Mark Bell – the man behind The Play That Goes Wrong – brings none of the pace or lightness of his West End hit here.

At one point, Day’s Ester refers to the stagnant world of modern playwriting, bemoaning the ’sophomoric reinterpretations of the already seen’. It’s supposed to be yet another knowing in-joke, but contains a heck of a lot of truth.

• Waiting For Waiting For Godot is at St James's Theatre, London, until September 24.

Review date: 7 Sep 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett