Review: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ Is Excellent

September 30, 2025Uncategorized

<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1588332" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/2ND.GODOT_AndyHenderson-3.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="An image shows actors Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves standing side by side in bowler hats against the large circular wooden tunnel set of Waiting for Godot.” width=”970″ height=”647″ data-caption=’Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves deliver a tender, rhythmically precise take on Didi and Gogo. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo by Andy Henderson</span>’>

After the final bow of Waiting for Godot, I rushed home to my library—specifically, the 2006 Grove Centenary Edition of Samuel Beckett, Volume III. Nothing. What about the PDF of the script sent by the publicist, with “Jamie Lloyd CO.” (the director’s company) splashed proprietarily across the cover page in 72-pt Impact? Nope, the stage direction wasn’t there, either. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the spot in Waiting for Godot where Beckett has Lucky flip Estragon the bird. Estragon (Keanu Reeves) has pooh-poohed Lucky’s dancing, and the unpredictable servant (Michael Patrick Thornton) responds with a quick middle finger. After half a dozen Godots, this was new to me. As was Estragon and Vladimir (Alex Winter), their backs to each other, executing a triumphal air-guitar riff. Fans of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure registered delight throughout the Hudson Theatre. Bogus? Not a jot.

Jamie Lloyd’s staging of the 1955 avant-garde classic feels daringly fresh yet simpatico with Beckett’s shabby tramps, mysteriously trapped by a country road and a dying tree, in expectation of a Mr. Godot who never shows up. Our existential clowns while away interminable days in crotchety, circular banter that segues into suicidal despair or resigned camaraderie. Over two acts, a diptych of stasis shading into panic, the men encounter roisterous aristo Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden) and his enigmatic slave, Lucky. A wary Boy (Eric Williams) creeps in at the end of each act to announce that Mr. G will appear the next day. So “Didi” and “Gogo” (as they’ve nicknamed each other) languish hopelessly, helpless to do anything else. In a particularly private moment, Vladimir listens to the air “full of our cries,” only to conclude, “habit is a great deadener.” He doesn’t elaborate on what exactly it deadens. Joy? Or misery, which can lead to self-slaughter? Habit may deaden happiness, but it also keeps us alive. Our two protagonists resolve to leave, but remain rooted to the spot.

<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1588335" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/4TH.GODOT_AndyHenderson-2.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="An image shows two actors in bowler hats standing in silhouette inside the circular wooden tunnel set of Waiting for Godot, with one reaching a hand toward the other against a bright white backdrop." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Soutra Gilmour’s monumental set design underscores the characters’ entrapment and futility. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo by Andy Henderson</span>’>

As noted in a previous review of Godot (with Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks), I always hear something new in the text, due to its elliptical, vaporous quality, like the shrinking memory of a dream. One thing I will not forget is purely visual: Soutra Gilmour’s monumental wooden tunnel/funnel of a set (a coup since the Beckett estate is notoriously controlling). Composed of boards of unstained wood, the structure resembles a vast drainage culvert fallen on its side or viewed from above. Estragon and Vladimir scamper up its curved sides only to slide back or topple over, a neat image for their Sisyphean days, two bowler-hatted hamsters on an unmoving wheel. Or circling the drain of life, waiting for a fatal flush. When they refer to the dead tree that most productions feature, it’s out in the audience. Various stage business—Pozzo devouring chicken and chugging from a bottle, endless repositioning of a stool or a whip—are mimed. This dematerializing concentrates our attention on the language, which the performers attack at a steady clip. At a little over two hours, this is the paciest Godot you may ever see. Also one with the boldest lighting scheme: designer Jon Clark drops a massive white moon into the upstage end of the tunnel to signify sudden nightfall, starkly silhouetting the tramps.

There’s more to savor than the brutalist design and snappy delivery: remarkable chemistry between the two leads, now in their early sixties with decades of film work behind them. The palpable affection between Reeves and Winter, and their scrupulous attention to the musical rhythms of Beckett’s demanding text, leads to a gentler, more vulnerable Didi and Gogo. Lloyd mikes the actors, so the line readings have a cinematic intimacy that gets under your skin. With a haunted, thousand-yard stare, Winter exudes a Hamlettish gloom that suits Vladimir’s status as the brains-and-thinking part of the act. Whereas Reeves’s petulant puppy of an Estragon stands more for the body: wrestling with ill-fitting boots, gobbling root vegetables or sucking on chicken bones, he suffers beatings in the night and wishes simply to sleep. Together, Vladimir and Estragon make one man, severed by a dying world.

Duos and twins pop up frequently in Godot, in allusions to the good thief and bad thief crucified beside Christ, Cain and Abel and a reference to the Boy’s brother, abused by Mr. Godot (he is spared). Likewise, the injustice of the world, the arbitrariness of power positions, are embodied in Pozzo and Lucky’s symbiotic pairing. In those supporting but pivotal roles, the phenomenal Dirden and Thornton balance the restrained, gentle approach taken by Winter and Reeves with grandstanding theatricality and vocal pyrotechnics. Dirden’s Pozzo orates like a gospel preacher making love to his own voice, and Thornton, who uses a wheelchair and for a time wears a sinister black muzzle, coos Lucky’s demented “think” monologue like it’s a benediction full of wisdom and grace. For Beckett devotees, this Godot will come across as both idiosyncratic and faithful, a weird masterwork seen and heard afresh. Fans of Bill & Ted and the John Wick franchise may be converted to theater of the absurd. Because if they attend expecting time-travel gags or hitman Gun-Fu, it’ll be a long wait.

Waiting for Godot | 2 hrs. 10 mins. w/ one intermission | Hudson Theatre | 141 West 44th Street | 855-801-5876 | Click here for tickets

An image shows the full cast—Alex Winter, Michael Patrick Thornton in a wheelchair, Keanu Reeves, and Brandon J. Dirden—in bowler hats positioned inside the wooden tunnel set during a scene from Waiting for Godot.

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