ALIAS GODOT
Featuring David Ferry, Alon Nashman. Written by Brendan Gall. Directed by Richard Rose. Presented by Tarragon Theatre. To Jun 1. Tue-Sat 8pm, $32-$38; Sat 2:30pm, $32; Sun 2:30pm, PWYC. $20-$32 students/ seniors, Sat eve excl. Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman. 416-531-1827. www.tarragontheatre.com.
Brendan Gall’s Alias Godot is the kind of show that could be lots of fun if it were an improv sketch. “Show why Godot never arrives in Waiting for Godot,” someone might call out, and the troupe proceeds to show us the bowler-hatted Godot being detained and questioned by two corrupt cops, incongruously enough, in modern-day New York. It would be funny in a stupid kind of way, but then we’d move on to the next sketch. Unfortunately, Gall’s play is two hours long — about four times the length a two-joke comedy should be. Gall shows no new insight on Beckett’s play, so one wonders what the point is of watching a great play diluted via television cop shows instead of watching the real thing.
Alias Godot echos the template of its source material: Vladimir and Estragon are replaced by cops Vince (David Ferry) and Eddie (Paul Braunstein), who have captured the mysterious Godot (Alon Nashman) because he may have witnessed one of their illicit activities. Their proceedings are interrupted by the unexplained arrival of Pozzo- and Lucky-equivalents Rocko (Tony Nappo) and Linus (Geoffrey Pounsett) of the Domestic Terrorism Unit, where Linus is Rocko’s silent gofer, except for a single virtuoso speech, not about “thinking” as in Beckett, but about police rules and regulation. As in Beckett, Eddie is beaten nightly, a tree, here a hatstand, glows leaves overnight and, despite Godot’s presence, the fate of Vince and Eddie is dependent on an elusive, never-seen figure called Jimmy Nicknames.
While Braunstein and Pounsett seem to be playing real characters, Ferry and Nappo are in over-the-top sketch comedy mode. Nashman is the calm enigmatic centre of the play but when it’s suggested that he Godot possesses magic powers that would allow him to escape if he so wished, the character both supports the old “Godot is God” interpretation that Beckett always rejected and makes nonsense of Gall’s plot.
In a play like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967), Tom Stoppard focused on minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to show how a different point of view can make us see tragic events as comic and vice versa. In contrast, Gall’s Alias Godot is simply an homage to Beckett’s play that neither illuminates it nor stands on its own.