Perfect casting for famous old pals act

Apr 20 2009 by Daniel Rosenthal, The Journal

A pair of thespian heavyweights appear at Newcastle Theatre Royal tonight in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot. Daniel Rosenthal talks to Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.

But back to the old friends in hand. McKellen continues: “All the evidence in the script is that Vladimir and Estragon are old friends, both pushing 70.”

McKellen will be 70 in May, and Stewart turns 69 this summer, which means that: “Patrick and I are the ideal age to be playing these parts.

“We’re still active, but, like Vladimir and Estragon, we know about aches and pains!”

Stewart adds: “Ian and I are both Northerners, separated only by the Pennines, and I think there’s another element there that gives us a shared understanding for the play.”

Since Godot’s British premiere in 1955, which led Harold Hobson, a drama critic of the Sunday Times, to call it “the most unforgettable and important” night of his theatergoing life, the play has been staged in more than 100 countries.

Literary critics and academics around the world have published hundreds of interpretations of what the characters and their predicament signify, labelling Godot as both optimistic and pessimistic, religious and atheist.

This prompts Stewart’s only concern about Mathias’ production, which reaches the Theatre Royal as part of a UK tour, prior to opening in London’s West End in May.

“If I have one fear,” he says, “it’s that people might be intimidated by the play’s reputation, or feel that they won’t understand it. But there is nothing difficult about this play and it’s our responsibility to make sure that every moment will have clarity for the audience.”

Godot, he continues, is not only filled with physical and verbal comedy, but is also deeply touching. He finds Vladimir’s tender concern for Estragon’s welfare particularly moving.

“Several weeks into rehearsal, there are sections I cannot read without getting upset.”

In both acts of the play, Vladimir and Estragon meet the brash Pozzo, played by Simon Callow, and his downtrodden servant, Lucky (Ronald Pickup).

Callow, a familiar face from films such as A Room with a View, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love, echoes Stewart by telling the story of a friend of his who acted in a student production of Godot, which toured universities in Ireland, the country of Beckett’s birth, in 1962.

“He told me that ‘We absolutely didn’t know what the play was about. But we found that if we just followed the rhythm of the dialogue, then in the audience there would be great laughter, followed by tears, almost systematically, throughout the performance’.”

Pickup, another hugely experienced stage and screen actor (his film and TV credits include The Mission and hit BBC comedy The Worst Week of My Life), has known McKellen since they joined the National Theatre company at London’s Old Vic on the same day in 1965.

He met and worked with Beckett in the 1970s and, after the writer’s death in 1989, had the honour of appearing at his memorial service, reading from one of his novels, Watt.

“In Godot,” Pickup says, “Beckett has thrown everything into the emotional pot. He keeps wrong- footing you, as actor and audience.”

He believes that all the theories about Godot “would have made Beckett laugh when he was alive and I’m sure he’s laughing now.

“The enigma that’s embedded in this play has allowed scholars to have a field day.

“That’s not knocking them - but it explains why Godot can be played in Beijing or Zimbabwe or here. It’s extraordinary how the same thing has kept on hitting all of us in rehearsal: the play is so accessible, so wonderfully psychologically apposite for any member of an audience.”

Waiting for Godot plays Newcastle Theatre Royal from tonight until Saturday. Returns only. Call 08448-112121.

See tomorrow’s Journal for David Whetstone’s review of tonight’s opening performance.