{"id":125829,"date":"2026-07-13T15:18:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=125829"},"modified":"2026-07-13T15:18:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:18:02","slug":"scrutiny-stratford-festivals-waiting-for-godot-plays-it-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2026\/07\/13\/scrutiny-stratford-festivals-waiting-for-godot-plays-it-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Stratford Festival\u2019s Waiting For Godot Plays It Safe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"L-R:
L-R: David W. Keeley as Lucky, Tom McCamus as Estragon, Paul Gross as Vladimir and Jonathan Goad as Pozzo,\u00a0Waiting for Godot. Stratford Festival 2026 (Photo: Dariane Sanche)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stratford Festival: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, directed by Molly Atkinson. With: Paul Gross (Vladimir); Tom McCamus (Estragon); Jonathan Goad (Pozzo); David W. Keeley (Lucky).Continues until July 31, 2026; tickets here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In Samuel Beckett\u2019s Waiting For Godot, which premiered in 1953, the state of waiting for something, or someone, that will never arrive or exist \u2014 which is a state of laying in expectation with a tenuous attachment to anticipation \u2014 is a political one, inextricably tied to hopeless despair and radical optimism.<\/p>\n

But, to conduct such a generous reading of the play would depend on the dramaturgical choices and social context implemented by any production staging it.<\/p>\n

\"L-R:
L-R: Tom McCamus as Estragon and Paul Gross as Vladimir,\u00a0Waiting for Godot. Stratford Festival 2026 (Photo: Dariane Sanche)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Premise<\/h3>\n

With its infamous tree, whose trunk, judging by the panels of cracked wood at its base, appears to have sprung out of the ground, Stratford Festival\u2019s take on the classic, directed by Molly Atkins<\/strong>, remains faithful to versions past, with a keen focus on emphasizing its absurdist humour. And it’s difficult not to laugh as Vladimir (Paul Gross<\/strong>) and Estragon (Tom McCamus<\/strong>), two old friends and sickly, odorous bums, bicker back and forth at what feels like the end of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should\u2019ve been a poet,\u201d Vladimir dryly says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was,\u201d Estragon quips back, looking down at his dirty, tattered clothes. \u201cIsn\u2019t it obvious?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gradually, as their reason for being \u2014 and thus living \u2014 by the tree is made clear, Beckett\u2019s simple language permits the performers to play with various tones ranging from philosophical depth, slapstick humour and existential ruminations that hint at their character\u2019s distant pasts. Gross and McCamus strike the necessary chemistry to convincingly forge a fraternal bond.<\/p>\n

The Surprise<\/h3>\n

What surprised me were the performances of Pozzo, a supposed aristocrat, played by a committedly camp Jonathan Goad<\/strong>, and Lucky, his slave of 60 years with a long rope around his neck, played by the astonishingly affecting David W. Keeley<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The palpable political undercurrents of their power dynamics as master and slave punctured the tedium of the existential and bathetic jabbering that preceded it.<\/p>\n

In Lucky\u2019s \u201cthinking\u201d monologue, after a completely mute, animalistic and primarily physical performance, I was seized by Keeley\u2019s incantatory yet incoherent speech, a revelation that lands on a cruel note.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an end to his thinking,\u201d Pozzo declares, bringing an end to his verbiage.<\/p>\n

It is not the act of waiting, then, that the insights into the human condition emerged in the play, but in how much one loses oneself to a belief, in an attachment, in the extension of a relation. It is in the thick, long rope of a leash stretching across the Festival Theatre\u2019s thrust stage that any audience member can see themselves, where our mortal suffering and struggling is most lucidly illustrated.<\/p>\n

Second Act<\/h3>\n

The play\u2019s second act is both a repetition and deviation of the first, since, along with a single green leaf that appears at the edge of a branch, characters such as Estragon, Pozzo and a boy (Asher Albert Waxman<\/strong>), who acts as a messenger for Godot, appear to have had their memories erased, which makes for a soporific experience that Beckett actually evidently anticipates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is becoming really insignificant,\u201d Vladimir says; and later, \u201cI\u2019ve been better entertained.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"L-R:
L-R: David W. Keeley as Lucky, Tom McCamus as Estragon, Paul Gross as Vladimir and Jonathan Goad as Pozzo,\u00a0Waiting for Godot. Stratford Festival 2026 (Photo: Dariane Sanche)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Direction & Design<\/h3>\n

That intellectual self-awareness and meta-theatrical genius of Beckett, which draws our attention to the illusive construction of narrative and identity, only appears in this assuredly cost-effective production through the lines, since Atkins seems to have relied on the simplicity of the text and the charisma of its talents to carry the show rather than apply her own perspective to it.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t helped by Cory Sincennes<\/strong>\u2019s set and costume design that feels rote and uninspired, Jareth Li<\/strong>\u2019s barely perceptible lighting design that fails to meaningfully track the passage of time, and Alessandro Juliani\u2019s atmospheric sound design that is incongruous to Atkins\u2019 uncertain vision.<\/p>\n

Why this play? Why now? It\u2019s not that a director must have an answer, but a hypothesis at least.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Atkins writes in the director\u2019s notes about who Godot is. \u201cMaybe we are waiting for something to make things better or tell us what we are meant to be doing here,\u201d she says of the character\u2019s state. \u201cSuch is life,\u201d she concludes on the topic of the play\u2019s ephemerality.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n

This lack of consideration, and a decision to hide behind the empty profundity of ambivalence, is evident in the production\u2019s vague direction, which presents rather than provokes questions, that stages rather than revitalizes Beckett\u2019s prophetic view, which, without any interpretations, becomes meaningless rather than evoke the sense of meaninglessness within the theatre space.<\/p>\n

One must take a risk in order to make a point and for all its potential, at 2 hours and 30 minutes, this is a tedious, expected take on the masterwork that doesn\u2019t know itself beyond its iconicity.<\/p>\n

In being beholden to the past, Stratford\u2019s Waiting For Godot renders itself irrelevant to our present.<\/p>\n

By Nirris Nagendrarajah<\/a> for Ludwig-Van.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Starring Tom McCamus and Paul Gross, Stratford\u2019s Waiting for Godot, an absurdist classic, reaches a nihilistic limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":125833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42533,3693,52,59,62],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/Copy-of-Copy-of-REVIEW-11.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-wJv","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125829"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125836,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125829\/revisions\/125836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125829"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=125829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}