Chasing Godot

There are a few classics whose lure refuses to die and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is surely a part of that club! Premiered during the early 1950s, Godot is still going strong. So much so that Neo of Matrix, Keanu Reeves (or if you know him as John Wick) is going to make his Broadway debut in the fall of 2025 with the play. Getting into the shoes of Estragon, joining him will be his Bill & Ted co-star Alex Winter as Vladimir. The show will be directed by Jamie Lloyd, who has to his credit Romeo & Juliet and Sunset Blvd, among others.

Screen adaptation

Waiting for Godot was made into a movie too. Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 2001 movie had Barry McGovern and Johnny Murphy in the lead roles. Rather stationary, just like the way the play is written, the film is hailed as a masterpiece and impressed the audiences.

Just like the West cannot have enough of Godot, closer home eminent theatre director Kewal Dhaliwal too is working on his next production — an adaptation of Beckett’s famous play. “We have adapted Waiting for Godot into the setting of Punjab and titled it Intezar Hai,” shares Dhaliwal. “It’s not a translation but adaptation,” he clarifies. The play, which has been one of the most successful ever, has been staged in different languages and different contexts, but is still relevant. “We wanted to do something that speaks about farmers’ plight in Punjab. What better than Godot? The play opened right after the Second World War ended, when humanity had lost its meaning, especially after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Isn’t Punjab of today in a similar listless state? Isn’t the farmer eternally waiting for someone to turn up? What political party or government will value life is what we address in Intezar Hai,” shares Dhaliwal. It bothers the theatre director that today we are in completely oblivious of social issues. “One doesn’t think beyond their palatial house or big car. Punjab especially is in an absurd state and so we thought of doing this play,” adds Dhaliwal.

Interestingly, during the early 2000s, another theatre veteran, MK Raina, did the same play in Kashmiri. “Do you know that this play, which has stood the test of time, was completely rejected by the French elite at its opening? Beckett then did it in a prison and there the ‘hope in hopelessness’ strand clicked with the prisoners. Since then, the play hasn’t looked back,” shares Raina, speaking to us from Kolkata, where he is curating a special programme to celebrate the birth centenary of Habib Tanvir. He talks about his production of Godot. “Those were the most bizarre times, the state in social and political upheaval. When we did the play, the audience was moved to tears. I realised how people in that turmoil may not be able to articulate what they were going through but sure related to this drama of the absurd.” For him, the play stands for God to arrive… who never does!

“For me, it’s a play of hope and existence, of self-realisation and spirituality,” shares Navdeep Kaur, chairperson, Department of Indian Theatre, Panjab University. Just like Vladimir and Estragon are waiting near the tree, Kaur believes we are still waiting. “Even seven decades on, do we have answers to life and our existence? Yes, we have built homes that probably are the safe spaces where we hope to know what the ultimate journey of human life is. But we are as clueless as those two characters in the play.” She mentions Covid times and how humanity clung on to hope. “Just like we passed those dark times, humanity will probably pass other tough times, but the eternal wait for answers remains…the wait is still on for Godot.”

For theatre director Umesh Kant, the play stands for desire, hope and frustration. “I am so glad that the finest to come out of the theatre of the absurd is getting a Broadway outing,” shares Kant, admitting plainly, “I have wished many times, but never dared to do Godot. To make theatre of the absurd accessible to common people, the director must have a crystal clear vision.”

For Kant, the play is been more relevant today than ever before. “Aren’t we all still waiting for things to fall in the right place? The wait, the hope and hopelessness is as relevant today as it was during the 50s, when this gem of a play was written,” says the director, who is working on his next production, a Hindi adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.