“This ‘Godot’ comes at a time so fraught that real-world resonances ambush us in the most unexpected shows, so it’s odd that that doesn’t happen here, or didn’t to me. Yet in some ways we are all Didi and Gogo, victims and onlookers — perpetrators, too — in the barbarism of the world.”
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"4/5 Stars! The genuine friendship between Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks distinguishes the latest major New York staging of Samuel Beckett's absurdist landmark...This 'Godot' isn't commenting on any particular crisis, just the cruelty of existence itself...It's been 70 years since the play premiered, and this production is evidence of its ongoing power. Purposefully ambiguous, this play seems timeless. 'Godot,' like Gogo and Didi, isn't going anywhere."
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“When Sparks and Shannon are playing together, they light up, finding both Beckett’s wit and his humanity. Their ‘Godot’ is a play about getting through the day with the person you love the most, the person you can’t stand for another minute — and in that sense, not being able to go, but having to go on, might not be the end of the world after all.”
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“Arbus and her actors achieve a dynamic and even heartfelt production of a classic that can easily grow tedious or mechanical...It’s hard to say anything new about a play as simultaneously open and inscrutable as ‘Godot’. Beckett’s subject is the inner life of . . . life.”
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“Beckett’s meditation on the human condition is chock-full of existential philosophizing, but in the end, he tells us, it’s a good sense of humor and relentless hope that keeps us going when we think we can’t go on. The play needs those things too for us to get through it. In that respect, Arbus’s ‘Godot’ does a decent job.”
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“Waiting for Godot originally shocked audiences with its portrait of two tramps marooned in an empty landscape where nothing happens; honoring Beckett's vision --"There's no lack of void," one of them cracks -- Shannon and Sparks create characters terrified by the nagging thought that maybe, just maybe, they don't exist. A play wildly mis-advertised in its 1956 Broadway tryout as "The Laugh Sensation of Two Continents" just about lives up to that slogan here, thanks to peerless star performances and inventive direction, but the laughter comes with the hint of a death rattle.”
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“Arbus may not be the first to be this true to Beckett, I’ve never seen one so scrupulously realized. And please note that I’ve spent so much time going on about this one aspect of Arbus’ treatment because it’s immediately representative of her entire supervision of Beckett’s comedy and accompanying tragedy...Arbus and expert cast offer as persuasive an argument for the positive attitude of going on as might be craved in our current Beckettian moment.”
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“If you’re not a Beckett fan, even the terrific performances on display in this strong production probably won’t be enough to change your mind. And truth to tell, as seminal as the play is, ‘Waiting for Godot’ doesn’t need to be nearly as long as it is, unless the playwright’s goal was to make us fully identify with his characters’ existential frustration.”
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