{"id":188995,"date":"2025-09-29T03:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/188995\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T03:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:53:09","slug":"keanu-reeves-alex-winters-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/188995\/","title":{"rendered":"Keanu Reeves & Alex Winter’s Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOf course it works. Two old friends known for their clownish escapades, always wanting to get back to somewhere they were \u2013 anywhere but here, really \u2013 all the while using ever so odd verbiage to conduct idiosyncratic conversations that only sound a bit absurd on the surface but actually speak to real emotion and maybe genuine friendship. I can\u2019t remember if the Bill & Ted movies were loaded with despair and suicidal ideation \u2013 I think not \u2013 but the stars of those movies, Keanu Reeves<\/a> and Alex Winter<\/a> probably had the chops ready to go, as they demonstrate in Samuel Beckett\u2019s post-war classic Waiting For Godot<\/a>, directed by Jamie Lloyd<\/a> and opening tonight at Broadway<\/a>\u2018s Hudson Theatre.<\/p>\n

\n\tBringing his impeccable, austere design and movement sensibilities to a play that has great use for them, Lloyd and his creative partners Soutra Gilmour (set and costume design), Jon Clark (lighting design), Ben and Max Ringham (sound design) and Cheryl Thomas (hair and makeup design) have created a production that\u2019s pure 20th Century modernest elegance, all light and dark and ambient drone and forced perspectives. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWinter, Michael Patrick Thornton, Dirden, Reeves<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndy Henderson<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, that set. On an otherwise dark, empty stage sits a tunnel, a very, very large open-ended tunnel, likely made of stone, the end furthest from the audience smaller \u2013 the forced perspective \u2013 to give it a sense of distance. A tunnel to what? Who knows, but a bright light does occasionally shine at the far end. (The staging takes some liberties with Beckett\u2019s stage instructions for \u201ca road\u201d and \u201ca tree\u201d; no road this, and we\u2019re only told the characters see a tree).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd into this tunnel wanders one Estragon, or Gogo, played by Reeves in a tramp\u2019s tattered black (or is it a dirty blue, or even gray?) suitcoat, bowler hat and boots that don\u2019t fit, and Vladimir, or Didi, played by Winter in similar colors but of a perhaps vaguely more modern fit). In any case, these are Beckett\u2019s drifters, no doubt, right down to the aching feet and bad breath.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen we meet the two, Reeves\u2019 Estragon is complaining about his ill-fitting boot, struggling to remove it. \u201cNothing to be done,\u201d he says, in what may be the most concise opening line indicator in all of modern history.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWinter, Michael Patrick Thornton, Reeves, Dirden (foreground)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndy Henderson<\/p>\n

\n\tYou probably know the rest, but I\u2019ll sum up best I can. These two starving, bedraggled sometime-acquaintances\/sometime-friends ponder everything they can dredge up from their fading memories. Were they hear yesterday? Why are they hear today? What happened last night, or will happen tomorrow? They have nothing to do, at least that they want to do, and know only one thing: They are waiting for Godot, a mystery man who at least Vladimir senses is the key to their lives. Neither has any idea what Godot will tell them, nor whether he\u2019ll even show up \u2013 everyday Godot sends an emissary to announce his arrival on the following day, and every day after the emissary arrives with the same massage. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s a human to do but wait for Godot and pass the time in despair and hope-against-hope?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe duo are soon joined to two other visitors, the thoroughly unpleasant Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden, Broadway\u2019s Take Me Out, Skeleton Crew, here truly terrifying in his now sweet-now menacing shifts), a sadist in his long black trenchcoat and Mad Max shades, accompanied by his servant Lucky (the excellent Michael Patrick Thornton, who appeared in Lloyd\u2019s A Doll\u2019s House revival with Jessica Chastain). The very sight of these two characters is ominous, with Pozzo bellowing orders and insults (\u201cPig!\u201d) to Lucky (Thornton is an actor who uses a wheelchair, so the stage rope typically used to tie master to servant is instead supplanted by Pozzo\u2019s constant manhandling of the chair).<\/p>\n

\n\tThornton, by the way, gets one of the play\u2019s tour-de-force moments when, long thought by Gogo and Didi to be mute, the servant is ordered by his cruel, whip-wielding master to \u201cthink!,\u201d at which time Lucky begins to recite Godot\u2018s strangest monologue, a mish-mash of intellectual-sounding gibberish that, at times, will have you believe it makes sense. Thornton handles it beautifully (at Pozzo\u2019s command to dance, the wheelchair user simply raises his hand and does a few Fosse hat tosses and then a sort of Charlie Chaplain finger dance. It\u2019s a fine moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tPozzo and Lucky will return in Act II, though somewhat changed, and they\u2019ll never be able to provide the answers that Vladimir and Estragon crave. <\/p>\n

\n\tReeves and Winter use every trick in their respective books to wile while waiting. They argue, they make up, they hug, they bellow and they show affection. They dance, they do the show\u2019s famous vaudeville hat swap (expertly, I might add), they climb (or attempt to climb) the curved wall of the tunnel only to come sliding down again and again. At one point, just after reciting Beckett\u2019s written line \u201cBack to back like in the good old days,\u201d Reeves and Winter look at the audience and immediately break into the famous air guitar riff from Bill & Tedd\u2019s Excellent Adventure complete with sound effects. The audience goes wild, and why not? This is the sort of clowing Gogo and Didi \u2013 long thought to be based at least in part on Laurel and Hardy \u2013 might do.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for the acting, there\u2019s little doubt that Winter is the most natural (and more experienced) stage actor of the two, more versatile and, when necessary, capable to drawing real pathos from this grim, gorgeous work of art. You believe his every changing mood. Reeves, as they say, is Reeves, an exceedingly charming actor who projects more than he acts but always seems to have full control of an audiences\u2019 attention (and affection). Yes, even when he seems to be trying too hard to be stentorian or angry or carrying out a bit of slapstick tantrum, he has us rooting for him.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd why not? He and Winter are limning their decades-old friendship, good times and bad, and melding it with one of the greatest 20th Century modern drama duos ever created. It\u2019s their Godot, and damned if it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWinter, Reeves<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndy Henderson<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: Waiting for Godot
Venue: Broadway\u2019s Hudson Theatre
Written By: Samuel Beckett
Directed By: Jamie Lloyd
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Brandon J. Dirden, Michael Patrick Thornton
Running Time: 2 hr 15 min (including intermission)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of course it works. Two old friends known for their clownish escapades, always wanting to get back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[93905,21540,110469,88,110470,10490,110471],"class_list":{"0":"post-188995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-alex-winter","9":"tag-broadway","10":"tag-broadway-review","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-jamie-lloyd","13":"tag-keanu-reeves","14":"tag-waiting-for-godot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}