Theatre

Estragon and Vladimir, the two tramps in Samuel Beckett’s play 'Waiting for Godot', might or might not be a Vaudeville double act fallen on hard times.

The bowlers and banter suggest Laurel and Hardy; the clowning, Chaplin and Keaton, the boots, panto laced liberally with Dali.

It’s their mutual dependency – one cannot leave the other, even though they suspect they might be happier apart – that makes this odd couple oddly moving, even though they’re not characters but caricatures.

Samuel Beckett: Godot creator

They might have fought together in a war, too, but that’s just the literalist in me trying to build a back story. It’s human nature to try and get a ‘hook’: one does need a little meat on one’s metaphors and Paul Stonehouse (‘Gogo’) and Paul Osborne (‘Didi’) of Old Bomb Theatre Company give us that.

They flesh out Beckett’s absurdist drama under Cecily Boys’ confident direction with endearing humanity as they argue and embrace, procrastinate and provoke, all the while waiting for Mr Godot to arrive and answer their prayers (whatever they might be – they can’t quite remember).

If the ‘set’ is surreal – a bare tree in an (apparently) godforsaken place – it’s nothing to the appearance of Capitalist Pozzo (Alan Booty) driving his slave, Lucky (Tim Holman) with a rope around his neck. Forced to perform a grotesque, shambling dance and ‘Think’ on command, Lucky’s bravura recital describes a reality more brutal than any of them can bear to contemplate.

However, there is no release from the living hell of the present, for the wakeful Didi especially, and all they can do is wait for night to become dawn and the cycle to repeat itself.

Not a play to go to if you’re feeling down, perhaps, but it’s slapstick-funny too and the physical comedy in the hands (and, more especially, feet) of local actors Osborne and Stonehouse – who have both performed with York Settlement Players – is a treat.

Having enjoyed a critically acclaimed, albeit brief run last November, Old Bomb’s current run at York Theatre Royal is already sold out but it’s worth trying for returns. Despite being more than 50 years old, Godot is remarkably – and aptly – timeless.

Well worth waiting in line for.

Kate Lock