Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ is not so excellent

A lick of air guitar and the directive “party on, dudes!” drew applause at a recent performance of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” a passing wink at its marquee appeal: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, bantering once more. Instead of slackers time-traveling through the “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” trilogy, here they famously have nothing to do but wait — for death, deliverance or maybe both — in an enigmatic tragicomedy that delights in bleakness and uncertainty.

This is not the first time that a famous pair has taken on the play in New York — fellow knights and “X-Men” foes Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart led the most recent Broadway revival (2013), and funnymen Steve Martin and Robin Williams teamed up for a run at Lincoln Center (1988). The chemistry between offstage friends, and even their joint celebrity, can work in the show’s favor. But this production from director Jamie Lloyd doesn’t overcome the obvious assumption that its casting is a stunt.

In fact, the actors approached Lloyd with the idea — they’ve remained close since the first movie in 1989 — and spent more than a year reading the play aloud and sending Zoom recordings to the director, who has a reputation for rethinking canonical shows, including with stars whose biographies resonate with the story. (See former Pussycat Doll turned Tony winner Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Blvd.”) But Reeves and Winter’s familiarity with the text — and eagerness to meet the challenge of performing it — may help explain the biggest problem: They don’t really seem to be listening.

Estragon and Vladimir, whose patter can swing from prosaic to existential within a breath, share the intimacy of passing who-knows-how-much-time together while waiting for you know who. But here, their volleys can zip at such a clip that the response comes before the previous one lands. Characters who don’t seem attuned to each other onstage invite the audience to tune out, which for Beckett is a particular shame.

Reeves, known for his smoldering stoicism in the “John Wick” and “Matrix” movies, is the more attentive of the two. Cheeks sunken beneath a grizzled beard, he lends the crabby Estragon a childlike demeanor: Seated at the lip of a giant tunnel gaping toward the audience (more on that in a minute), he crosses hands over thighs as though trying to hold himself together. His Estragon is petulant but not juvenile, weary but not without a spark of curiosity.

Winter, who acted on Broadway as a child (in “The King and I” and “Peter Pan”) and has turned to indie filmmaking, is stiffer and less skilled. It’s perhaps because of their long-standing association — and fan affection for it — that Winter and Reeves don’t appear more unevenly matched. Vladimir’s unwavering devotion to his sleepy pal is especially endearing here, but his philosophical musings evaporate without a thought.

That’s also due to the rushed pacing: The revival runs just over two hours with an intermission, but the language asks for more breathing room. Rhythms are defined by the silences that surround them, and the production is hesitant to allow for much quiet. That’s true between lines and in major tonal shifts, which are announced by echoey effects or ominous droning (sound is by Ben and Max Ringham) and abrupt changes to the pale lighting (designed by Jon Clark) that resemble Instagram filters.

But the question of overdesign comes down to the Rorschach tunnel, a sort of tubular purgatory that could be a sun-bleached sewer to hell, the barrel of 007’s gun or whatever else you can imagine. (Lloyd’s longtime collaborator Soutra Gilmour designed the set and the soiled but too-chic-for-the-end-times costumes.) I finally settled on the circular passage as an embodiment of Beckett’s play — evocative and mysterious in a way that doesn’t benefit from overthinking. Try, and you’ll wind up sliding down the sides, as the actors do in a recurring physical gag that could characterize the whole production: mildly amusing but slick and surface-skimming. Neither especially funny, emotional or thought-provoking, it’s caught in a sort of aesthetically pleasing but hollow limbo.

Promise arrives, in each act, with the repeated entrance of other characters: The enslaver Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden with the buttery drawl of a plantation owner) and his captive Lucky (Michael Patrick Thornton behind a mask either designed to filter noxious fumes or for BDSM play). Both actors demonstrate compelling mastery of Beckett’s prose, which Dirden gnaws with relish and Thornton delivers with plainspoken lucidity, even as he monologues intellectual nonsense.

That Dirden is Black and Thornton uses a wheelchair is one of the production’s more intriguing provocations. (Was Pozzo formerly enslaved, and did he turn the tables on Lucky?) The other is the young messenger who tells the men, with a voice as sweet and high as sugar cane, that Godot will not come, played on the night I attended by Eric Williams, who is Black, in a gray hooded sweatsuit.

There’s an allure in “Waiting for Godot” to all that we can’t see onstage. That includes, in this case, both the real and on-screen connection between its stars. But even a bromance for the ages has its limits.

Waiting for Godot, through Jan. 4 at the Hudson Theatre in New York. About 2 hours and 5 minutes with an intermission. godotbroadway.com.