Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.My word, they’ve been waiting a long time. It’s 71 years since Samuel Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon first parked themselves beneath that spartan tree in expectation of a visit from the mysterious Godot and, without doing anything very much, changed the landscape of live theatre forever. And here they still are. Turning up nightly in the hope of something better.One joy in James Macdonald’s superb new production — led by stunning performances from Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati — is that it honours, so eloquently, the irony in that. I’ve never seen the play’s dance along the border between artifice and truth so meaningfully executed. Macdonald and his team relish the play’s philosophical brilliance and emotional depth while underscoring its chastening political power. “Nobody ever recognises us,” says Vladimir tartly.On the one hand, it’s sharply fresh, tweaked in appearance to speak to our precarious times. Whishaw’s Vladimir and Msamati’s Estragon are no bowler-hatted vaudevillians, but could have walked in off the street: two homeless guys in grubby, ill-fitting trousers and T-shirts. Msamati’s Estragon, though the bigger and more solid of the two, seems swamped by his clothes: his old work overalls sagging and bagging, his boots ill-fitting; Whishaw, tiny and slight, is squeezed into a bomber jacket that hugs his ribs and tracksuit bottoms that barely meet his ankles. They fill the time, philosophise, grumble, dream and fight because that’s all they have — and they’re bloody good at it.The actors lean into this wonderfully. Their performances are exquisitely detailed and beautifully timed. Msamati’s Estragon is the more grounded, prosaic, rooted: in idle moments he stares at the ground or tries to sink into sleep. Whishaw’s Vladimir is light, restless, all elbows, knees and flickering fingers, and given to torrents of thought or gazing wistfully at the heavens. He has a delicacy of phrase that hints at a more fortunate earlier life. They’re very funny as they bicker over details, but they also seem lost and damaged, sometimes clinging to each other like children and secretly aware that, in a world of utter uncertainty, they need each other.Rae Smith’s set strands them on a bleached-out bank beside a gnarled rib of a tree draped with tattered plastic — a bleak, post-apocalyptic wasteland. The arrival of Pozzo (Jonathan Slinger), the pompous, upper-class bully and his chronically abused servant, Lucky (Tom Edden), seems more incongruous than ever — relics of an anachronistic power system tottering across a broken world. Whishaw and Msamati stare at Slinger’s Pozzo, bemused, as he fusses over arcane points of etiquette. Edden meanwhile brings a dazzling physical elasticity to Lucky, but also, in his wildly rambling “thinking” monologue, the haunting remnants of logic, philosophy and art.But while all this seems stingingly resonant, the production reminds us that this story has been played out many times. Smith’s set is contained within a glowing gold frame, quietly highlighting the irony of watching a play about destitution against a backdrop of opulence. Beckett’s self-conscious theatricality lands freshly here: Vladimir and Estragon will turn up again tomorrow because they are characters in a play — but also because the dispossessed are still with us, 70 years on. “You did see us, didn’t you?” asks Vladimir urgently.★★★★★To December 14, waitingforgodotplay.com
