APT’s Farcical ‘Waiting for Godot’

“We all are born madand some remain so,” says Estragon (Jim DeVita) to Vladimir(James Ridge) in American Players Theatre’sproduction of Waiting for Godot,Samuel Beckett’s existential masterpiece, which opened in APT’s TouchstoneTheatre on Friday. The pair’s enduring madness, of course, is waiting in vainfor the unidentified Godot (pronounced GOD-oh to honor the author’s intentions,according to director Kenneth Albers). Their fate is to endure life’s demeaningconditions without the realization that those conditions are theirs to change.

Albers plays the1952 absurdist work as broad farce, giving DeVita and Ridge license to mixBeckett’s wordplay with very engaging physical comedy. Godot, it’s been noted,is similar in sound to godillots,French slang for “boots,” and much is made of Estragon’s discomfort with hisboots, including possibly the single funniest scene of physical comedy in APT’shistory.

The cast iscompleted by Brian Mani as the mysterious Pozzo and John Pribyl as the unluckyLucky, tethered to Pozzo with a stout rope around his neck and controlled bycommands such as, “Sit, pig!”

The four, along withalternating cast members Marco Lama and Anders-James Wermuth as the boy, aredressed in costumer Holly Payne’s tattered, post-apocalyptic wardrobe achinglyappropriate for people who have spent too much time suffering too many abuseson the road.

In Beckett’s mind,that description might apply to all mankind, which may make the existentialtreatise uncomfortably familiar to many audience members. But tapping into thefolly of our own reluctance to change was probably the author’s goal all along.