Humour and humanity in ‘Waiting for Godot’
Arts Week with Judy Murphy
The words ‘belly-laugh’ and Samuel Beckett aren’t often found in the same sentence, but actors Marty Rea and Garret Lombard insist that he’s one of the funniest The words ‘belly-laugh’ and Samuel Beckett aren’t often found in the same sentence, but actors Marty Rea and Garret Lombard insist he’s one of the funniest writers writers going the roads.
Going the roads is what they’ll be doing next month in Druid’s production of Waiting for Godot, which is being staged in Druid Lane Theatre for this year’s Galway International Arts Festival.
Beckett’s famous play centres on two characters Vladimir and Estragon, who wait endlessly for the Godot of the title. At various points they are joined by another pair, Lucky and Pozzo, slave and master. And there’s a boy who promises that Godot will come ‘tomorrow’.
The interaction between the men is bizarre and absurd and this play, which was first produced in 1953, heralded a new type of theatre, while Beckett and his works have provided fodder for academics ever since.
But for Marty and Garret, the humanity and humour of Godot are what makes it special. They feel these elements can be forgotten amid all the academic studies.
Marty, who is playing Vladimir and Garret as Lucky, are currently in week two of rehearsals alongside fellow Druid ensemble members, Rory Nolan (Pozzo) and Aaron Monaghan (Estragon).
They say audiences should be in for belly laughs as well as darker moments in this production.
The darkness in Waiting for Godot is based on uncertainty, Marty feels. “You don’t know why you feel so despairing, but the comedy is more present and direct, way more than I thought.”
Vladimir and Estragon are an old-style comedy act in the vein of Laurel and Hardy he adds, as he quotes another Irish actor, Lorcan Cranitch.
Cranitch, who was in a production of Godot in London, decided to bring his seven-year-old son to see it but someone suggested it wouldn’t be suitable for the child. Cranitch replied that it would “because you have one clown who can’t get his boot off and another who is dying for a piss”. Put like that, you can see the appeal.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.