Godot aims to bring audience in

If while watching senior Tommy Kriegsmann's production of Waiting for Godot, an audience member lost his train of thought, he might assume that the story set its characters in the theater with him.

Kriegsmann explained that his play is a metaphor based on the audience's experience of watching it. And so he takes rather deliberate steps towards dismantling any illusion of another period or place, or of any place, or of people who are different from the audience.

To this circular end he has a bare stage, one tree made from old door frames, naked, sandy planks covering the floor, a moon that rises in a balanced picture frame, lamp-lit from the inside with its electrical chord trailing below. Nothing is quite convincing as what it represents. The props are perhaps meant to be recognized as such.

None of this is too different from other Godot productions: the general notion of the set is sparse and shabby, dusty hair, worn-out clothes, and so on. But then, in a moment of panic, one of the actors smacks into the back wall, the canvas ripples, registering the impact.

This is a step further from other productions. And, according to Kriegsmann, it was planned. Not only do they crash into a wall representing an unspecified distance extending behind the stage, they actively search out eye contact with the audience, admitting that they are together in time and place. "It is a play which happens in front of the audience," Kriegsmann said.

The next logical question ought to be, "Why should this play be a metaphor for the audience's experience of watching it?" Kriegsmann answered by pointing out that others have said that the play has no catharsis to it. "There is a definite catharsis in the play," he said.

The play needs to happen in front of its audience to allow for this catharsis, for the purgation of emotion. Otherwise, the tragedy of the play is lost. The tragedy of the play (which is billed a tragicomedy) is extracted, according to Kriegsmann, in "...how much Beckett [the author] allows us to relate to his characters."And how is the characters' situation tragic? This requires a subtlety not for the faint of heart.

The play's characters are amnesiacs. If they can remember, they may not be aware that they do. Early in act one, we hear:

Vladimir: Did you ever read the Bible?

Estragon: The Bible...(He reflects.) I must have taken a look at it.

V: Do you remember the Gospels?

E: I remember maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were....

Furthermore, the characters are so feckless and deluded that they cannot remember the beginning of their conversations. They take up questions, get confused in the asking, and then forget to ask or ask something else.

Thinking is an impossibility. They cannot determine the color of a pair of shoes in front of them, nor do they realize that the shoes are Estragon's from the day before. At one point there are two characters on stage and three hats, one worn the day before by another character. Vladimir tries on the hat, and casts his aside. Estragon looks at Vladimir's old hat as if he'd never seen it before, casts his own aside and puts it on. Vladimir discovers Estragon's hat, puts it on and the cycle continues still moments later. And this is basically how they discover each waking moment.

Kriegsmann is trying to get his audience to relate to characters who have no notion of existence. The play represents characters whose every action is rubbish, who cannot think, who spend their time wasting away in unwitting contact with their effects.

Who are these characters and do we relate, then? First we meet the plays' pair of clowns, Vladimir (senior Chris Abraham) and Estragon (senior Ben Rosen). Vladimir is the play's busybody: he starts the conversations, tries his best to keep up morale, remember the days past, and make certain that they wait for Godot. Estragon is deprived of sleep, beaten, kicked and delirious. Rosen is ambled and loose and he and Abraham manage to get a sullenness out of their comedy, that of a kind of doom inherent in their repetition of action.

Abraham has a commanding figure which stoops in distress, showing us his mop of ginger hair. His Vladimir is frenetic and anxious, grabbing his infected genitals at the first mention of sex, smiling for fear. He is the one who maintains illusion in place of understanding. If he cannot, they are lost. He is hung between meaninglessness and illusion and it makes him nervous.

Rosen's Estragon is laconic and frustrated, yet prefers to accept whatever seems to be. Kriegsmann says "I chose Ben for his ability to create a character on the spot." And since Estragon seems to have little use for memory, each of Rosen's reactions seem as fresh, even when repeated. Failing to make sentences work in a question, he stumbles in exasperation (as if this were really out of the ordinary), saying "Bags. Why? Always hold. Never put down....Why?"

Secondly, we meet Pozzo (junior Jeremy Ellison-Gladstone) and Lucky (senior Ted Goldberg) The void of existence has obviously had serious affects upon Pozzo, for, in the absence of everyone else, he has assumed that he is the end-all and be-all of the universe. Upon introduction, he says "I am Pozzo!...Does that name mean nothing to you?!" Ellison-Gladstone is fine-featured and blond, making his Pozzo less the fascist and more the Dandy. He wears a loud, orange-plaid leisure suit and immediately one recognizes him as the napoleonic character. And, here, he is not so much the Hitler as has often been portrayed. He is somehow subtler.

Lucky is one of the more physically demanding roles in a play of this kind. Other than the fact that he is the slave, and must carry bags of sand, dance while bound at the feet, gasp for breath and so on, he must also portray a relentless kind of physical anxiety for every moment he is on stage. He has bound himself to Pozzo, it seems, because he would rather submit to an egomaniac that to the endless void of existence. In this, his physical pains seem a metaphor for all the other characters' anguish. A fair amount of physical grace would be necessary to bring this out.

Lucky is the recluse, yet he slowly becomes more and more present in the action until his monologue, which is an explosion of insanity and mumbling.

Waiting for Godot shows Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. All perforamces are sold out, waiting lists begin an hour before each performance.