At the top of the show, Keanu Reeves’ Estragon and Alex Winter’s Vladimir make a “1990s” reference to their past life together. No matter that “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” came out in 1989. Maybe they’re talking about the 1991 sequel, “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.” The comic duo doesn’t really replicate their Bill and Ted personas until well into the second act when they enjoy a very brief riff on their air guitars, a moment that delights that audience at the Hudson Theatre, where the latest Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” opened Sunday.
What’s missing chemistry-wise between this Gogo and Didi, as they call each other, is not really apparent until Brandon J. Dirden’s Pozzo and Michael Patrick Thornton Lucky appear. They make their entrance at the back of the stage, which designer Soutra Gilmour has turned into a gigantic tunnel.
Or maybe it is the inside of the tree that director Jamie Lloyd has relegated to somewhere in the first of second balcony. Gilmour’s set and Jon Clark’s lighting create several eclipses of the sun and moon worthy of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and it against one of these dramatic lighting displays that Pozzo, needing to wear black sunglasses, pushes the wheel-chair-bound Lucky, wearing a Hannibal Lecter protective mask.
Lucky has only one very famous attack of logorrhea, and yet, even in his silence, the tragic codependence of these two men is more clearly and quickly established than anything going on in the previous half hour between Reeves and Winter. It’s also great to see Dirden and Thornton, two real theater animals, attack their roles with such obvious relish, that creepy reference to “The Silence of the Lambs” being the least of it.
This Pozzo is a bursting sun repelling everything in its orbit, and this Lucky is the black hole that sucks it all right back. An added attraction is that Dirden brings an old American South flavor to his portrayal. This fine actor is destined to play Big Daddy or Boss Finley.
Regarding the broken link in this ensemble, what Reeves does have going for him is a look. The late theater illustrator Al Hirschfeld would have drawn him with a minimum of very long lines. This Gogo is so tall and thin as to be suffering from severe desiccation, the eyes small beads of black glass, the body so starved for another of Didi’s carrots that hair has sprung out all over his face in a kind of hirsute protest. Gilmour’s costumes emphasize this physical starkness by making Gogo’s suit too small, Didi’s suit too big. Of course, there are the Laurel & Hardy black derbies, also worn by Pozzo and Lucky. Gogo and Dido aren’t so much big and thin as they are tall and short. They are also the stomach and the brain, the id and the ego.
But a look only goes so far. It is not a performance, and Reeves very studied and mannered delivery of his lines is enough to ban the word “staccato” from Webster’s.
Which leaves it to Winter to carry this tragicomedy act. It’s a lopsided routine, but this Didi’s longing gaze out over the audience not only makes us see that missing tree but the abyss that awaits us all.
Jamie Lloyd attempts to make up for the lack of a dynamism between the two leads by overusing the tunnel set to decreasing comic effect. Over and over again, he sends Reeves and Winter, as well as Dirden, running up the sides of the tunnel only to slide back down. Never have I felt so sorry for hamsters.
