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New: Theater Review: 'Waiting for Godot' at Brooklyn Preserve, Oakland Inbox

Ken Bullock
Wednesday January 18, 2017 - 10:48:00 AM

Estragon: "The best thing would be to kill me, like the other."

Vladimir: "What other? (Pause) What other?"

Estragon: "Like billions of others."

I was talking with playwright James Keller not long ago, who casually said that the two great—or was it most influential?—plays of last century were Pirandello's 'Six Characters in Search of an Author' and Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot,' the first a sensation in Paris before World War II by an established Italian dramatist and fiction writer, and the second coming in with the War's aftermath, seemingly out of nowhere, a surprise hit in Paris, then elsewhere around the globe, by an obscure Irish expat poet, novelist and translator, written in French.

'Six Characters' isn't produced so much anymore (Paris' Théâtre de la Ville staged it—and very well—on tour here a few years ago for Cal Performances), though its influence still makes itself felt in elegant, mostly indirect ways. But 'Godot' (as well as its shy genius Beckett) has proven itself a keeper in theaters any and everywhere, as well as being taught in classrooms—and becoming a catchphrase, waiting pointlessly for someone or something that never shows ...

'Godot's' notoriously difficult to put on, despite a simple premise and set-up just as simple: two tramps wait in a barren landscape, graced only by a bare tree (which has put out leaves in the second of two acts) for the ever-absent Mr. Godot, who they seem to expect help from, but are given the message he won't be there today—apparently ad infinitum. Meanwhile, while waiting for their presumptive benefactor, they witness a kind of profane epiphany: the strange appearance, in this no particular place, of a roaming master with a whip and his exhausted manservant.

Most productions, even some that basically stick to the letter, inevitably gild the lily somehow, or (maybe more a fault of the past) try to discover some symbolism as key to it all—or chalk it all up to Existentialism—when it's like a theatrical poem, to be acted out literally and taken in whole by the audience—a recital. Somewhere along the line (and it's happened with Chekhov, too, and other modern playwrights), the realization set in that 'Godot' has much humor—Gogo & Didi (Estragon and Vladimir's nicknames for each other, all they're addressed by onstage) are old troupers, vaudevillians right out of Music Hall with their sad andeager jokes and occasional slapstick—and inevitably it's staged as a sketch or kind of stylized, heavy situation comedy, with no situation at all.

I don't know if I've ever seen a purely satisfying staging of it, just more or less interesting and enjoyable renditions. This new version, though, a collaboration between Oakland's Ubuntu Theater Project and Berkeley's Inferno Theatre, seems to be the closest yet, more and more interesting as it unfolds—and more and more enjoyable. 

Besides the genuine theatrical enthusiasm and overall excellence of the young cast, and the grace of Inferno founder Giulio Perrone's movement-centered stage direction, a couple of key ingredients, or moments, make it worth seeing all by themselves: 

The space—Brooklyn Preserve, a former Presbyterian Church, dating from the late 1880s, when the neighorhood, just east of Lake Merritt, was known as Brooklyn—now home to Ubuntu ... The sanctuary, where 'Godot'—which at moments is something like the bawdy Miracle Plays of the Middle Ages—is staged (though the audience sits back to the altar, watching the action take place where the congregation usually gathers) using the whole space of this elegant old religious interior, complete with carved and polished balcony wrapped around the hall above the pews below and the pipes of a massive organ ... It's a rare pleasure just to sit there, and it gives 'Godot' an indefinable atmosphere, different from any other staging of it I know. "There's no lack of void."(Though in the resonant sanctuary with its high, eight-faceted ceiling, heat escapes quickly—best to dress warmly for the two act play, plus intermission.) 

And the inset of Pozzo and Lucky, master and slave, one garrulous and self-loving, the other silent, grimacing with suffering, finally madly ebullient in the famed "Lucky's Speech"—especially framed by mainstays J. Jha and Kevin Rebultan as an appropriately Mutt 'n Jeff Vladimir and Estragon, showmen of sorts in their battered bowlers, courageous cowards, clowns of the open road ... the master and servant perform a curious tango of barked commands, a cracked whip, juggled baggage and Lucky's dance with the rope that is his leash ... Mohammad Shehata is a brash Pozzo—and Indigo Jackson an exquisite Lucky, with wonderful gargoyle melancholia broken by quick, meticulous dancing and acrobatics and a blythely absurd recitation. 

Uma Channer plays the deadpan Boy who comes on high with tentative, coy messages from Mr. Godot—and the rest the interplay between the two old down-&-out pros, Didi & Gogo, finding Lucky's discarded thinking hat and holding it pensively for a moment, like Hamlet held Yorick's skull, before clapping it on the head—to no effect ... or the wonderful juggling of three hats by the two mad hatters ... 

The casting of two women (and a transgender actor) in this play of all-male outcasts, vagabonds, refugees adds astrangely subtle accent to its tender androgeny of sometimes unwilling companionship. 

The only other version I can think of as inventively interesting was Theatre of Yugen's, done in a variety of old Japanese theater forms (including puppetry) at the old Theater Artaud, now Z Space, just over thirty years ago, a show Beckett himself expressed interest in. 

I urge you to go see it—running just this Saturday at 8, Sunday at 2 and Mondays at 8 through February 27th. MIchael Moran of Ubuntu writes in the program that the production is to see what relevance 'Godot' has, with its sense of absence, to America today—and it's a capital success, showing presence underpinned by absence, and what a sublime thing Beckett's unexpected masterpiece still can be. 

Brooklyn Preserve, 1433-12th Avenue (between 14th Street/International Boulevard & 15th Street, near Foothill), Oakland. $15-$35 reserved online, pay-what-you-can at the door. www.ubuntutheaterproject.com