Keanu Reeves & Alex Winter’s Adventure

Of Course it work. Two Old Friends Known for their Clownish Escapades, Always Wanting to Get Back to Somewhere they were – anywhere but times, Really – All the ÇUNGE ÇEVER SODUCT VERBIGH Speak to Real Emotion and Maybe Genuine Friendship. I Can’t Remember if the Bill & Ted Movies were Loaded With Despair and Suicidal Ideation-I Think Not-But the Stars of Those Movies, Keanu Reeves and Alex Probably Had the Chops Ready to Go, As they demonstrate in Samuel Beckett’s post-War Classic Waiting for Godot, Directed by Jamie Lloyd and Opening Tonight at Broadway’s Hudson Theater.

Bringing HisCeccable, Austere Design and Movement sensitiaments to a play that has great use for say, Lloyd and His Creative partners soutra gilmour (Set and costume design), Jon Clark (Lighting Design) Design) Have Created a Production that pure 20th Century Modern Elegance, All Light and Dark and Drone Environment and Force Perspectives.

SO, that set. On an otherwise Dark, Empty Stage Sites a Tunnel, A Very, Very Large Open-Ended Tunnel, Likely Made of Stone, the End Further from the Audience Smaller-the Forced Perspective-to give it a sense of distance. Do you tunnel to what? WHO KNOWS, but A BRIGHT LIGHT DOES OCCACAVALY SHINE AT THE FAR END. (The Staging Takes Some Liberties With Beckett’s Stage Instructions for “A Road” and “a Tree”;

And ono this tunnel winners one estragon, or gogo, played by reeves in a tramp’s tattered Black (or is it a dirty blue, ore gray?) Suitcoat, Bowler Hat and Boots Don’t Fit, and Vladimir, or Didi, Played by Winter in Similar but of Vagu fit). In any Case, these are Beckett’s Drifters, No Doubt, right down to the Aching Feet and Bad Breath.

Be we meet the two, reeves’ estragon is complaining about his ill-fetting boot, struggling to remove it. “Nothing to be done,” he says, in what May be the Most Concise Opening Line Indicator in All of Modern History.

You probably know the rest, but i’ll sum up best i can. These two starving, BEDGAGLED SOMETIME-ACQUAINTANCES/SOMESTE-FRIENDS PONGERTING THEY CAN DEDGE UP THEIR FADING MEMORIES. Were they hear yesterday? Why are they Hear Today? What Happened Last Night, Or Will Happen Tomorrow? They have nothing to do, at the laast that they want to do, and know only one Thing: they are waking for Godot, a mystery man at least vladimir senses is the key to their lives. Neether has any idea what Godot will tel, Nor whereer he’ll the show up – everyday gods an emissary to announca his arrival on the following day, and every day after the emissary achievements with the massage.

What’s a human to do but Wait for Godot and pass the time in Despair and Hope-Against-Hope?

The duo are soon joined to two Other Visitors, The Thoroughly Unpleasant Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden, Broadway’s Take with Out, Crew Skeletonhere Trrifying in His Now Sweet-Now Menacing Shifts), a sadist in his long blackcoat and mad max shades, accompanked by His Servant Lucky (The Excellent Michael Patrick Thornton, Who Appeared in Lloyd’s Lloyd’s A doll’s house Revival with Jessica Chastain). The Very Sight of these two characters is ominous, with pozzo bellowing orers (“pig!”) To Lucky (thornton is an actor who uses a wheelchair, so the stages rope typically to serve. chair).

Thornton, by the way, gets one of the play’s tour-de-fork moments when, long thought by gogo and didi to be mute, the servant is oroured by his cruel, whip-wieding master to “think!” Godot‘S Strangest Monologue, A Fish-Mash of Intellectual-Sounding Gibberish that, at Times, Will Have You Believe IT SENSE. Thornton Handles It Beautifully (at Pozzo’s Command to Dance, The Wheelchair Simply Raises Hand and Does a Fosse Hat Tosses and THEN A Sort of Charlie Chaplain Fine.

Pozzo and Lucky Will Return in Act II, though somewhat changed, and they never be able to provides the ansors that vladimir and estragon.

Reeves and Winter usersery trick in their respective books to wile while waiting. They Argue, They Make Up, They Hug, They Bellow and They Show Affection. They Dance, they will the show’s famous vaudeville hat swap (expertly, might add), they climble (or attempt to climb) the curved wall of the tunnel only to come down again and again. At one point, just after reciting Beckett’s Written Line “Back to Back Like in the Good Old Days,” Reeves and Winter Look at the Audience and Immediately Break The Famous Guitar Riff From Bill & Tedd’s Excellent Adventure Complete with Sound Effects. The audience Goes Wild, and Why Not? This is the sort of clawing gogo and didi – long thought to be based at least on Laurel and Hardy – Might will.

As for the Acting, there’s the little dubt that winter is the most natural (and more experiencerence) Stage Actor of the Two, More Versatile and, Wen Necessary, Capable to Drawing Real Pathos from This Grim, Gorgeous Work of Art. You believe his way Changing Mood. Reeves, as they say, is Reeves, an exceedingly charming actor who projects more than he acts but always to have full Control of an audiences (and affection). Yes, evening he seames to be trying too hard to be stentorian or angry or carrying out a bit of slapstick tantrum, he has US rooting for Him.

And Why not? He and Winter Are Limming Their Decadees-Old Friendship, Good Times and Bad, and Melding It With One of the Greatest 20th Century Dura Duos Ever Created. The iTiir Godotand damned if it doesn’t work.

Title: Waiting for Godot
Venue: Broadway’s Hudson Theater
Written by: Samuel Beckett
Directed by: Jamie Lloyd
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Brandon J. Dirden, Michael Patrick Thornton
RUNNING TIME: 2 HR 15 min (Including Intermission)