<\/p>\n
A lick of air guitar and the directive \u201cparty on, dudes!<\/a>\u201d drew applause at a recent performance of Samuel Beckett\u2019s \u201cWaiting for Godot,\u201d a passing wink at its marquee appeal: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, bantering once more. Instead of slackers time-traveling through the \u201cBill & Ted\u2019s Excellent Adventure\u201d trilogy, here they famously have nothing to do but wait \u2014 for death, deliverance or maybe both \u2014 in an enigmatic tragicomedy that delights in bleakness and uncertainty<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is not the first time that a famous pair has taken on the play in New York \u2014 fellow knights and \u201cX-Men\u201d 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\u2019s favor. But this production from director Jamie Lloyd doesn\u2019t overcome the obvious assumption that its casting is a stunt.<\/p>\n In fact, the actors approached Lloyd with the idea \u2014 they\u2019ve remained close since the first movie in 1989 \u2014 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<\/a>, including with stars whose biographies resonate with the story. (See former Pussycat Doll turned Tony winner Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond in \u201cSunset Blvd.<\/a>\u201d) But Reeves and Winter\u2019s familiarity with the text \u2014 and eagerness to meet the challenge of performing it \u2014 may help explain the biggest problem: They don\u2019t really seem to be listening.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t seem attuned to each other onstage invite the audience to tune out, which for Beckett is a particular shame.<\/p>\n Reeves, known for his smoldering stoicism in the \u201cJohn Wick\u201d and \u201cMatrix\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Winter, who acted on Broadway as a child (in \u201cThe King and I\u201d and \u201cPeter Pan\u201d) and has turned to indie filmmaking, is stiffer and less skilled. It\u2019s perhaps because of their long-standing association \u2014 and fan affection for it \u2014 that Winter and Reeves don\u2019t appear more unevenly matched. Vladimir\u2019s unwavering devotion to his sleepy pal is especially endearing here, but his philosophical musings evaporate without a thought.<\/p>\n That\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s gun or whatever else you can imagine. (Lloyd\u2019s 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\u2019s play \u2014 evocative and mysterious in a way that doesn\u2019t benefit from overthinking. Try, and you\u2019ll 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\u2019s caught in a sort of aesthetically pleasing but hollow limbo.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s prose, which Dirden gnaws with relish and Thornton delivers with plainspoken lucidity, even as he monologues intellectual nonsense.<\/p>\n That Dirden is Black and Thornton uses a wheelchair is one of the production\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an allure in \u201cWaiting for Godot\u201d to all that we can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n