Waiting for Godot director accused of ‘dumbing down’

A new production of Waiting for Godot, with Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart as the vagrants Vladimir and Estragon, opened in London last night to generally good reviews. But has one of the great plays of the 20th century been dumbed down for the sake of an audience more interested in McKellen and Stewart as movie stars (in Lord of the Rings and X-Men) than in a revival of Samuel Beckett's tragi-comic masterpiece?

By casting two such well-known actors, the producers have achieved a record £2.4 million in advance sales at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. But the director, Sean Mathius, known for making Bent a West End hit in 1989, stands accused by two of London's senior theatre critics of making the production too "easy".

Charles Spencer writes in the Daily Telegraph: "There is a constant feeling in this production... that Sean Mathius is trying to make things as easy and palatable as possible for a West End audience."

He goes on: "The bleakness of the piece, once described as a drama in which nothing happens, twice, has been prettied up with sight gags, comic sound effects, funny voices, and an elaborate set locating the action in an abandoned derelict theatre. This last innovation is in complete contradiction of Beckett's own stage directions."

For the play to be "great" as opposed to simply "entertaining", Spencer says McKellen needed to "dig deeper" while Mathius should "tone down his manic production to allow the play's still sad music of humanity to be heard more clearly".
 
The Guardian's Michael Billington agrees, arguing that "Mathius's star-studded revival misses the elegiac musicality of Peter Hall's 2006 production and lends this unnerving play a patina of cosy charm".

Billington praises the acting of 70-year-old McKellen and 69-year-old Stewart but concludes that although he found "much to enjoy in the production", he felt as though he was merely "watching talented comic performers rather than listening to the still sad music of humanity".
 
Michael Coveney of the Independent and Benedict Nightingale of the Times are much more forgiving. Nightingale struggles to find any fault with the play, saying of McKellen and Stewart: "Few could bring such variety to the business of being bored. They're moving, they're witty, they're inventive, they're - well, excellent."

Coveney applauds Sir Ian's portrayal of Estragon and says Stewart's Vladimir is "restrained and accommodating", with the actor holding his own next to the great McKellen. ·