Fifteen minutes into Waiting for Godot I become aware that the infamous tree stripped bare usually present in productions of this play has been replaced by a farmer's fence post. Extending from floor to ceiling, the post has been separated into two parts, not by axe or chainsaw, but by flame. A burnt offering the relevance of which could not be lost upon a nation's psyche almost incinerated by Australia's worst natural disaster, the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Reg Evans, an omnipotent actor who appeared in many Australian television and theatre productions, had the natural features of a tragic clown. Sad, brooding eyes beneath an overhanging brow offset by the comic goofiness of quivering jowls, if ever one man was born to play Estragon in this, La Mama's 2009 production of Godot, it was Evans. And he almost did as well; having initiated this show in collaboration with director Laurence Strangio, only then to die in the St. Andrews bushfire.
Using the often quoted 'Inferno' to figuratively express a vision of hell was best achieved by Dante. These days, such an inflammatory metaphor should be left to religious zealots conducting sunday morning bible classes. But this is not to say that director Strangio's inclusion of a burnt fence post in this production was not an inspired choice. As a visual statement encapsulating the metaphysical malaise central to all of Beckett's work, it was also a wonderful memorial to Evans in particular, and many others, who tragically lost their lives in what could only be described as a Beckettian moment. The firestorm that incinerated St. Andrews on that February afternoon must have seemed to its inhabitants the arbitrary act of an indifferent God; one annihilating all before it by reducing everything to ash. More sedate, but no less catastrophic, is the vision of Hell that permeates this production of Waiting for Godot. Its flames slowly licking upwards through gaps in La Mama's timber floor, Vladimir and Estragon, not to mention Pozzo and Lucky, find each other in a figurative Hades, within which each is meticulously basted. Then words fail, and the prevailing silence roasts each character alive.
Used imaginatively, La Mama is an expansive space. Pozzo and Lucky's entry through double doors connected by a cruel length of black rope, then includes an exit out La Mama's box office door; thereby suggesting courtyard and car park as horror stretch of a perambulating imagination. Both soon return though, Pozzo feigning Mussolini and Lucky suggesting a slapstick draughthorse straight from a silent movie. Mute, and accepting of the inexplicable tyranny that has befallen him, Lucky, like ourselves, remains absolutely loyal to his dictatorial master. Here, Beckett's writing enters a sadomasochistic domain. Treat a person like a Dog and that person will forever lick its master's feet. Treat a dog like a person and one day, it will rip out its master's throat. It's a lesson for Vladimir and Estragon, both unaware of the interdependent tussle that underscores their own relationship. Beckett elucidates a fundamental dilemma of life, making Waiting for Godot an aphoristic play. When Estragon attempts to impart an act of kindness toward Lucky, his altruism is rewarded by Lucky stomping on his foot. Estragon is incensed, and in his own gentle way becomes a resentful tyrant not altogether different from Pozzo. Via this presentation of Vladimir and Estragon's platonic romance, the audience receives a filtered version of the brutality of existence. Neither kind or cruel, right or wrong, good or evil, Nature is beyond any manichean interpretation of the inexplicable absence pervading life. Nature just IS.
Characteristically though, Beckett the writer must lay the blame somewhere. Lucky's exhausting diatribe, covering everything from tennis to philosophical reflection, is linguistic gymnastics at its most oppressive. Beckett's word to the wise is that the word itself, its irreducible tyranny, is the rubber mallet that beats us into submission. By attempting to explain misery, Lucky succeeds in only making his life more miserable. Consequently, when Pozzo is debilitated by an inexplicable blindness, it is Lucky who dutifully cares for him. In spite of some technical difficulties, and the performers' brave failure at attempting to remember every line of this two and three quarter hour production, Waiting for Godot, unlike its competition currently showing at the Carlton Courthouse, displays a deeper awareness of Beckett's idiosyncratic vision. Anti-humanistic his work may be, but like a lobster submerged in boiling water, we also squeal, scream and pop when subjected to excruciating pain.
Waiting for Godot
Director: Laurence Strangio
Performers: John Flaus, Peter Finlay
Alex Pinder, Robin Cuming & Phelix
Strangio
Design: Meg White
Light: Richard Vabre
Lighting Operator: Oscar Strangio
Sound: Roger Alsop
Stage Manager: Alicia Benn-Lawler
La Mama, April 14-25, Melb.
No comments:
Post a Comment