<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile the Samuel Beckett estate is notoriously rigid about changes to the Irish playwright\u2019s texts, they seem cool with a quick air-guitar riff. That cheeky insertion, which comes right after Keanu Reeves<\/a>\u2019 Estragon leans against Alex Winter<\/a>\u2019s Vladimir and says, \u201cBack to back like in the good old days,\u201d gets the biggest laugh of Jamie Lloyd<\/a>\u2019s mixed-bag Waiting for Godot<\/em> revival. As soon as the production was announced, New York theater<\/a> buffs were calling it Bill & Ted\u2019s Existential Adventure<\/em>, referring to the stars\u2019 history in the sci-fi comedy trilogy named for their time-traveling metalheads.<\/p>\n \n\tIt turns out, paradoxically, that rather than just a single winking aside, the play could have used more of those sweet-natured dimwits. Playing out Beckett\u2019s grim scenario of two poor souls stuck in post-apocalyptic limbo as Bill and Ted at least would have represented a bold choice \u2014 something Lloyd\u2019s staging makes only in the stylized design department.<\/p>\n \n\tSoutra Gilmour\u2019s imaginative set dispenses with the usual lonely country road and withered tree, instead framing the (in)action in a giant wooden funnel, the blackness at its far-end aperture suggesting unsettling proximity to the void. It\u2019s a striking visual, enhanced by Jon Clark\u2019s expertly calibrated lighting and the exacting sound design of Ben and Max Ringham. But as the old theatrical adage states: \u201cNobody goes home humming the scenery.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe awkward but lovely moments in which Reeves and Winter\u2019s decades-long friendship is evoked \u2014 an urgent embrace, a coat draped over a sleeping body, a gentle caress, clasped hands \u2014 are among the most touching representations here of two men whose only refuge in a purgatory of encroaching terror is each other.<\/p>\n \n\tIn-demand Brit director Lloyd is a specialist at stripping down plays and musicals to scratch out raw feeling and electrifying modernity, usually with major-name stars. His successes on Broadway<\/a> have included Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal<\/a><\/em>, Jessica Chastain in A Doll\u2019s House<\/a><\/em> and Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Blvd.<\/a><\/em>, while his buzzed-about London revival of Evita<\/a><\/em>, with Rachel Zegler, seems likely to be New York-bound before long.<\/p>\n \n\tBut the thing is, Waiting for Godot<\/em> is already about as stripped-down as mainstream theater gets. There\u2019s not much to be gained by swapping out props like a carrot or a picnic basket or a pipe for mime or relocating to our imaginations the tree that was the sole element Beckett specified in his austere visual concept. The play, which has been baffling and provoking audiences for almost 75 years, is already an exercise in theatrical deconstruction.<\/p>\n \n\tLloyd\u2019s production isn\u2019t an embarrassing misfire but it\u2019s underwhelming. This is a work in which the slapstick clowning and the tricky verbal non sequiturs should be merely the surface for roiling undercurrents of anguish, futility, despair and fear.<\/p>\n \n\tReeves and to a lesser degree Winter mostly favor the frustrating ennui. Sure, there\u2019s melancholy and humiliating loss of dignity beneath their circuitous conversation, which appears to have been going on since as far back as their memories extend, or farther. But Beckett\u2019s masterwork should make us laugh while mercilessly prodding our own sense of hopelessness. That makes it both timely and timeless.<\/p>\n \n\tAs Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden), the self-important blowhard who stumbles upon the protagonists with his mistreated servant in tow, the ironically named Lucky (Michael Patrick Thornton), declaims: \u201cLet us not speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe thing is though, multiple generations these days do<\/em> wake up each morning decidedly unhappier than their predecessors. Or at least angrier, more isolated and reconciled to catastrophe. Which should make Waiting for Godot<\/em> knock the wind out of us like a punch in the guts.<\/p>\n \n\tNot so much here, even if there\u2019s pleasure in watching Reeves and Winter as a dystopian, bowler-hatted Laurel and Hardy. They make Gogo and Didi, as the characters fondly address each other, as tetchy as they are affectionate, as mutually exasperated as they are confused, scared and clingy.<\/p>\n \n\tWinter has the strongest moments as the more grounded Didi, deep in contemplation throughout the eternal anticipation of Godot\u2019s arrival but more resigned each day to the reality that salvation in the guise of that mysterious entity or any other will not be coming. <\/p>\n \n\tThe revival\u2019s most affecting note is when a young boy (Zaynn Arora at the performance reviewed), who brings another deferred promise from \u201cMr. Godot,\u201d asks if Vladimir has any message for him. \u201cTell him \u2026 tell him you saw me and that \u2026 that you saw me,\u201d stammers Didi, as if proof of his ongoing existence depends on the word of a child. And yet, despite everything, he holds onto his sense of purpose.<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s something Reeves\u2019 Gogo, whose memory is completely shot, has surrendered. The actor gets mileage out of stiff-limbed physical comedy, but his signature spaced-out monotone \u2014 so perfect in the John Wick<\/em> movies, as well as earlier favorites like Speed<\/em>, Point Break<\/em>, The Matrix<\/em> and My Own Private Idaho<\/em> \u2014 makes Gogo the less soulful of the two. Even when he\u2019s suggesting the expedient of suicide by hanging or making grim pronouncements like: \u201cIt would be better if we parted. The best thing would be to kill me,\u201d his Gogo is one-dimensional. (As a longtime fan, it kills me<\/em> to say that.)<\/p>\n \n\tPerhaps many Broadway theatergoers paying up to $500 a ticket to see beloved screen stars up close in a uniquely intimate play may come away feeling satisfied. Reeves and Winter certainly throw themselves into crowd-pleasing moments like a frenetic hat-swapping routine.<\/p>\n