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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Martin Salter as Ester, Jess Bishop as Lara and Stuart Wishart as Val Waiting for Waiting for
Godot The Nonentities The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster ***** Anyone who has seen Sam Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot will know it is about . . . well, you’ve seen it
so surely I don’t need to explain it, do I? Well, this play is about
waiting for waiting for him, Godot that is . . . the clue is in the
title really. So, not a lot happens, waiting is a bit like
that, well, it’s a lot like that really, so it’s just as well that as
nothing happens there is an endless stream of glorious laughs to fill in
the time. Ester and Val are a pair of jobbing actors and
one suspects their level within that Thespian hierarchy is little more
than a speaking part up from an extra. They are understudies for the
main roles in Beckett’s play about . . . you know . . . Godot, and
stuff. Their moment has yet to come as the two actors
actually portraying the roles on stage night after night after night . .
. are steadfastly refusing to die, fall ill, be hit by falling
spotlights, be sacked or walk out in a huff. So, Ester and Val spend night after dreary night
in costume - just in case (or more desperate hope) – waiting. It’s a
wait for something we suspect is never going to happen, which is a bit
like what Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon are doing on stage –
coincidence or what! We open with Martin Salter’s Ester desperately
trying and failing to fasten a waistcoat that appears to have been
tailored for a, should we say, more minimalist figure. It is a delightful performance from Salter as an
actor with a far larger ego than his limited experience and even more
limited ability can support. He turns pompous into an art form. With an
eye on charging for his make it up as you go along acting courses, he
decides to pass on what he regards as his vast knowledge of the actor’s
art to his less experienced colleague – vast, and indeed experienced,
doing a great deal of hernia inducing heavy lifting here.
Know-it-all Ester, with more bluster than talent,
dreams of his moment in the limelight but you feel the dream is far more
preferable than the terrifying fear of actually having to go on and . .
. do it. His career highlight appears to have been
appearing in Hamlet, (or was it Titus?) in the park. Who he
played, whether prince or, more likely, merely a holder for a spear,
which park and even when are details which appear to be less important
than the fact he had appeared in a production . . . any production. Stuart Wishart’s Val is the innocent abroad in
all this. His experience is . . . you would not be surprised if you were
told that this could well be his first real role, and even this role is
merely a remote possibility. He fell into acting by accident rather than
burning desire. We meet him when he arrives with takeway coffees
from that chain of coffee shops called . . . petrol station, bought, as
it turns out, by Aunty Mary, who comes to the show each evening in the
hope of seeing Ester and Val actually on stage. On the face of it Val bows to Ester’s vast
experience, his having been a between engagements actor far longer, but
is it more just a need to get on together in the confines of a scruffy,
dressing room-cum-store room with musty unused costumes and ancient
unneeded props for company (excellent set design Keith Rowland and
dressing Rowland and Jane Williams). There is a moment when Val dons the
waistcoat and we have an insight of what he really thinks of his would
be mentor. In a strange twist it appears Val, the less experienced, less accomplished Val, is a far better and far less hammy actor than Ester will ever be, which hardly helps the relationship, especially when Val appears to have stolen a march on Ester in the actorial representative stakes – although how that relates to peeing in a takeaway coffee cup in a fire bucket while halfway up a ladder defies explanation - just don't try it at home gents, especially if you are married. With nothing else to do and the boredom threshold
long ago breached, our intrepid duo give us their thoughts on life, on
ambition, on acting, on art, on the biz, on Macbeth and him, the
director. Into this bizarre cocoon of nightly waiting they have created comes Lara, matter of fact ASM Lara, played by Jess Bishop. Assistant stage managers are among that unsung, unnoticed (unless it all goes wrong) army of support that every production needs – without them the likes of Val and Ester are . . . well blokes standing on un unlit stage with no scenery in an empty theatre.
The pressing problem is the waistcoat. It appears
the actor on stage is wearing one that appears to be for a more
corpulent actor, say, around Ester’s size perhaps, and she is looking
for the other, smaller one . . . Lara does not have too much time for actors,
unlike ASMs, an actor’s job is easy she tells our hapless pair. “Actors
wear clothes that someone else made, stand where someone else tells them
to whilst saying words that someone else wrote. Anyone can do it.” Challenged she makes her point performing a
dramatic monologue using the tech script with all its LX (lighting) Qs. For a play with nothing happening, American
author Dave Hanson, has squeezed an enormous number of laughs and
theatrical jokes into his delightful play which launched in New York in
2013. Ester declares no one goes to RADA, or Radar, as he calls it,
which means he is somewhat deflated when Lara declares her cousin went
there. He also tries to teach Val his made up on the
spur of the moment acting techniques, based on things he presumably half
heard somewhere or other, such as the Miserly acting technique,
repeating a line said to you – a tiny part of the Meisner Technique to
encourage instinctive acting – a lesson leading to a repetition from the
pair that could almost have taken us to dawn. Then there was the Mamet, pronounced by Ester as Mammais, technique, of swearing at an audience – David Mamet being best known for his expletive ridden, as in every other word, Glengarry Glen Ross, among 'effin other plays. Beckett’s absurdist play has two blokes waiting
for a guy they don’t know and have never met who never comes. Hanson has two blokes waiting to perform a play
they don’t understand (hands up anyone who claims to understand it),
have never performed, and are unlikely to ever perform, but wait night
after night just the same. There is Val, feet on the ground Val, who just
meanders along with it, it’s a job after all and what comes comes, and
Ester, rather sad, hopeless and helpless dreamer Ester, who lives and
breathes acting, or at least his one afternoon acting course version of
it. And then there is Lara, the only one with an actual job doing
anything in theatre. It is full of its own version of absurd,
delightfully daft, yet Hanson, from nowhere, conjures up a moment of
emotion, which strikes home like a sniper’s bullet, totally unexpected
and strangely moving, creating a moral dilemma for our understudies. Has
the chance come at last or has it passed for ever? I enjoyed every nothing much happening here
minute of it, from cluttered set to Godotesque costumes (Carol Wright –
loved Ester’s ripped trousers), clever LX ,as Ester will no doubt now
call it, from director Joe Haper and superb and convincing acting from
an excellent trio. Once more, professional standard from The
Nonentities and a richly, entertaining delight from costume
battling start to sad, opening lines end. To 13-04-24. Roger Clarke 08-04-24 |
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