{"id":2059017,"date":"2025-09-30T04:28:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T04:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2059017"},"modified":"2025-09-30T04:28:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T04:28:57","slug":"rough-keanu-reeves-struggles-in-mediocre-production-of-stage-classic-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/rough-keanu-reeves-struggles-in-mediocre-production-of-stage-classic-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rough\u2019 Keanu Reeves struggles in mediocre production of stage classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

Theater review <\/span><\/p>\n

Waiting for Godot<\/h2>\n

Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes with one intermission. At the Hudson Theatre, 141 W. 44th Street.<\/p>\n

Over at the Hudson Theatre\u00a0on 44th Street, the crowd is waiting for Neo.<\/p>\n

And John Wick.\u00a0And, of course, Bill and Ted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the sense that Keanu Reeves<\/a> shows up for work at \u201cWaiting for Godot,\u201d the play that opened Sunday night on Broadway, they get what they came for. Celeb spotters will be satisfied that they forked over as much as $670 to bask in the presence of the chosen one.<\/p>\n

But, besides the famous faces of Reeves and his \u201cBill & Ted\u201d co-star, Alex Winter,<\/a> is the audience\u00a0being\u00a0treated to a top-tier production of Samuel Beckett\u2019s absurdist tragicomedy?<\/p>\n

Is Reeves any good?<\/p>\n

Eh, not really. This particularly meandering and stiff \u201cGodot\u201d is hardly an excellent adventure.<\/p>\n

Nor, by the way, is it a bogus journey.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s, as Bill and Ted <\/a>would say, most nontriumphant. Mediocre. And the leads, one of whom is way out of his depth, certainly face the music.<\/p>\n

The chummy actors play Estragon and Vladimir \u2014 a k a Gogo and Didi \u2014 two clownish men who live out their repetitive days in a barren wasteland anticipating the arrival of the mysterious Godot.<\/p>\n

The show could be about religion, war, politics, the meaninglessness of life or nothing at all. Pick your poison.<\/p>\n

The duo\u2019s conversations are\u00a0eccentrically\u00a0banal (\u201cWhat do we do now?\u201d \u201cWait.\u201d \u201cYes, but while waiting.\u201d). There\u2019s a musicality to the patter, though, and a lot of humor\u00a0and darkness\u00a0for\u00a0gifted\u00a0performers to\u00a0sink their teeth into.\u00a0With the right casting, the\u00a0strange,\u00a0bleak chit-chat can mesmerize and fascinate.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/span><\/div>\n

From left: Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves and theater director Jamie Lloyd at the opening night of \u201cWaiting for Godot\u201d on Broadway. WireImage<\/p>\n

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen did just that on Broadway 12 years ago. The British vets were hilarious, touching and haunted in the parts.<\/p>\n

Yes, they were popular for \u201cStar Trek\u201d and \u201cThe Lord of the Rings.\u201d But they also were Iago and Prospero.\u00a0Reeves and Winter, needless to say, did not spend decades with the Royal Shakespeare Company.\u00a0Remember Keanu in the movie \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing\u201d?<\/p>\n

As Didi, Winter, who\u2019s become an acclaimed\u00a0documentary filmmaker in recent years, is the more impressive of the two. He carries around a poignant sadness you wouldn\u2019t expect given his\u00a0silly\u00a0body of work. He\u2019s\u00a0quite moving. And the pair\u00a0do\u00a0have a natural rapport.<\/p>\n

Reeves, on the other hand, is rough. He\u00a0doesn\u2019t imbue any of Gogo\u2019s lines with meaning\u00a0\u2014 only speed and breathiness. They\u2019re just memorized words\u00a0that are read with the investment of stating one\u2019s Social Security number.\u00a0The actor\u00a0relies on a vacant stare that\u2019s money when he\u2019s playing an assassin on the big screen. Not so much in\u00a0live\u00a0theater.<\/p>\n

\"Alex<\/span><\/div>\n

Alex Winter plays Vladimir and Keanu Reeves portrays Estragon in this stage production of Samuel Beckett\u2019s classic. AP<\/p>\n

The guys\u00a0race through dialogue like they have a train to catch instead of black SUVs idling outside. Act One is turned into\u00a0a\u00a0downer \u201cWho\u2019s On First?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGodot\u201d gets a jolt<\/a> from the arrival of Brandon J. Dirden\u2019s pompous Pozzo and his (mostly) silent slave, Lucky, played by Michael Patrick Thornton.<\/p>\n

Dirden is appropriately blowhardy\u00a0as the whip-wielding master.<\/p>\n

And Thornton, great as ever, has carved out a unique niche on Broadway: This is his second time being one of the best aspects of a classic play revival led by an action movie star. He was\u00a0also\u00a0in the unforgivably heinous \u201cMacbeth\u201d with Daniel Craig. I\u2019d rather see Thornton above the title.<\/p>\n

The other big name here for theater fans is Jamie Lloyd, the British director who\u2019s had recent triumphs with the musicals \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d with Nicole Scherzinger and \u201cEvita\u201d starring Rachel Zegler.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/span><\/div>\n

The guys race through dialogue like they have a train to catch. AP<\/p>\n

\"Winter,<\/span><\/div>\n

Winter, who\u2019s become an acclaimed documentary filmmaker in recent years, is the more impressive of the two. Ron Asadorian \/ BACKGRID<\/p>\n

But his work on plays, like the torturous \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d in London that managed to sap the charm away from \u201cSpider-Man\u201d actor Tom Holland, is hit and miss.<\/p>\n

Acting aside, this is one of\u00a0Lloyd\u2019s\u00a0better dramatic efforts. He boldly does away with the typical \u201cGodot\u201d\u00a0aesthetic\u00a0of gray emptiness and an ominous tree in the back. Instead,\u00a0designer\u00a0Soutra Gilmour\u2019s set is a bright, giant wooden cylinder that looks like something Timoth\u00e9e\u00a0Chalamet might pilot in \u201cDune.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are none of Lloyd\u2019s usual screens or al fresco adventures either.\u00a0Unlike what\u00a0the director\u00a0did to Jessica Chastain in \u201cA Doll\u2019s House,\u201d he generally allows Reeves and Winter to actually walk around.<\/p>\n

But cool scenery doesn\u2019t go very far when one of the actors on it simply cannot handle Beckett.<\/p>\n

The moment that gets the biggest response, actually, has nothing whatsoever to do with the writer or \u201cWaiting for Godot.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Didi and Gogo are talking about the old days, Winter and Keanu do the air-guitar move from \u201cBill & Ted.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the audience laughed, I could palpably feel them wishing they were watching that instead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theater review Waiting for Godot Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes with one intermission. At the Hudson Theatre, 141 W. 44th Street. Over at the Hudson Theatre\u00a0on 44th Street, the crowd is waiting for Neo. And John Wick.\u00a0And, of course, Bill and Ted. In the sense that Keanu Reeves shows up for work at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2059018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[383682,382458,382780,383681,306645,382460,356017],"class_list":["post-2059017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-44th-street","tag-alex-winter","tag-bill-and-ted","tag-hudson-theatre","tag-keanu-reeves","tag-michael-patrick-thornton","tag-samuel-beckett"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\u2018Rough-Keanu-Reeves-struggles-in-mediocre-production-of-stage-classic.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2059018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}