“There are no more juicy parts amongst modern classics than Didi and Gogo – Vladimir and Estragon to you – the tramps who wait for Godot.” Ian McKellen

We were in Newcastle to see one of the 20th century’s most celebrated plays, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. This most hyped production brings to the same stage Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup. It’s a hot number. All the tickets have sold out and, perhaps not unsurprisingly, it is a roaring success.

The production makes no apologies in playing for laughs, the humour, as always, underpinning a gulf of tragedy. But it also underlines a wealth of warmth and concern between the two protagonists – Vladimir and Estragon – who are presented rather convincingly as a double-act, often reminiscent of the music-hall, although to younger audiences they will be reminders of more recent popular television partnerships. On a slightly different level they are like an old married couple, held together by strands of affection and memory and habit, but tending to take each other for granted.

The two have known each for years and have known better times. But when we meet them they are homeless and destitute. Patrick Stewart’s Vladimir has accepted some responsibility for the welfare of his friend, and he works at it conscientiously, though it is a thankless task and one that is bound to fail. McKellen’s Estragon, on the other hand, is a world-weary man who would really like to disappear. He often brings up the subject of suicide, he has no boots that fit, and his nights in a ditch are always interrupted by a kicking from local thugs.

Simon Callow is Potzo; and Ronald Pickup’s hapless Lucky is anything but. Director Sean Mathias has a triumph on his hands.

(When Pozzo and Lucky have left the stage in Act 1):
VLADIMIR: That passed the time.
ESTRAGON: It would have passed in any case.

This is a play in which everyone is waiting, the characters who form the centre of the play; the actors who play them; and the audience. But towards the end of each act a small boy appears with a message from Godot. He is involved in a small exchange with Vladimir and then he departs. It seems that he is the only one in the entire theatre who is not waiting – this child.

From April 30, the play moves to the Theatre Royal Haymarket. I had more to say about the script in my last review.

POZZO: (suddenly furious.) Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.

‘It’s also been a lifelong ambition of mine to be on stage with John Kani. So this feels like all my dreams coming true.’
Antony Sher

We were at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, to see Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with Anthony Sher as Prospero and John Kani as Caliban, directed by Janice Honeyman in a co-production by Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

From the moment the curtain was raised we knew we were in for something special. A feast of colour and movement and music explodes onto the audience; a thirty-foot serpent parades, perhaps flies over the stage while individual spirits swirl and sing and leap and intermingle with the elements as Prospero’s storm whistles around the trees and the caves of the island, and out at sea, his enemies are detached from their vessel and floated ashore, separated, and at the wizard’s mercy.

Anthony Sher’s semi-native Prospero is dispossessed, exiled on this tumultuous island far from home. He is scheming, simmering with rage at his fate, dressed in skins and perhaps not as warm and gentle as he could be with his fifteen-year-old daughter. He has drawn his enemies to this island, where he wields all the power and where he can do with with them as he will. Prospero wants revenge. This time around he will be the victor.

Tinarie Van Wyk Loots is an original Miranda, also dressed in skins with unruly hair and dirt on her face and legs. She has long nails and scratches herself and is totally unselfconscious. She has, of course, only seen two men in her life, one her father and the other a slave, though never a monster, Caliban, played magnificently by John Kani.

Atandwa Kani plays the spirit, Ariel, beautiful, smouldering with self-love and itching for his freedom. He is tall and elegant, apt to swing his hips rapidly from side to side, and he moves around the stage like a dancer. He and his fellow spirits wear body-paint and feathers and hair and smear themselves with clay. The stage vibrates with colour.

Anthony Sher’s Prospero is ultimately noble and tender, though he has to reach deep inside himself to come through his rage for revenge.

The production takes the play as a metaphor for colonialism and to this end the island, or Africa itself becomes a magical land, almost a character in its own right. Good use is made of enormous puppets, masks and stilted images, sparkling with colour, and behind it all the rhythms of Africa are ever present through the musicians inhabiting the interior of the stage.

‘This island’s mine,” howls Caliban, an enraged black man. Antony Sher’s white Prospero hangs on to his power, but to do so he has to exert every ounce of his strength.

There were no free seats at Leeds Grand and I expect the situation will be similar when the tour moves on to Bath, Nottingham and Sheffield. Don’t miss it.

The mother, Bernarda, is a matriarch who rules her roost with a stick. She rarely appears on stage without it. She thunders in every scene, ordering an eight-year mourning for her late husband, keeping up appearances with her neighbours, making the life of her girls an utter misery. This is a part which is sometimes played in Spain by a male actor.

All of this, is, of course, allegorical. The play’s symbols rattle around the stage, from the names of the daughters to the colours of their clothes. There is a mad grandmother who parades around in a wedding dress, though she is usually locked out of site, and there are a couple of men, but neither of them ever appear on stage.

What is most striking in the script is the simmering heat and repressed sexuality of the women in the house, the cross of Catholicism hanging over each of them, and the insidious creep of fascism closing in on all of their lives.

The eldest and youngest daughters compete for the only available man, and the consequences of this is devastating for everyone involved. The play is brought to a conclusion with an unwanted death and with Bernarda reinstating her authority, insisting that no one ever talks about the events we have witnessed, and that silence reign over all.

This is a difficult play to bring off, and would be so for an experienced professional cast. Lorca’s work brims with symbolism and subtlety, and is placed in a specific time and place, requiring minute attention to detail and timing to bring about an atmosphere of overwhelming sexual and spiritual repression.

It is not surprising, therefore, that this performance, by an amateur company, left its audience not entirely convinced. Nevertheless, the script (translated by David Hare) is so good and some of the players so outstanding, that the evening was in no way wasted. It was an ambitious project to undertake, and we can be thankful that that did not put them off trying.

Nevertheless we found ourselves in Newcastle yesterday and made our way over to Northern Stage to see this play, which has never really offered comfortable viewing.

It deals with racism, jealousy, domestic violence and revenge, and often leaves one with a feeling of rage and some incomprehension at the heartlessness and waste of human life which, for a few brief hours, becomes our world.

But this production, for various reasons, did not work for me. Kathryn Hunter, the director, decided to introduce song and dance routines into the action, and although these were fine in themselves, they detracted from, rather than added to the ongoing narrative of the play. A blacked-up Minstrel singing Are You Lonely Tonight may well be in bad taste, but the real sin is in placing it at the centre of a tragedy which works perfectly well without additional gimmicks.

Michael Gould as Iago more or less gets away with his humourless portrayal of a dullard who, miraculously, seems to be an apt student of human nature.

But Patrice Naiambana’s characterization of Othello only works in flashes. He has little trouble convincing us of his love for Desdemona, or of his ability to lead his men, or, indeed, of his great nobility. But he falls for Iago’s trickery far too easily, and is then completely unreasonable in his jealous rages, allowing himself to be reduced to the state of a slighted child. To a large extent the play depends on the audience being able to empathise and have sympathy with Othello, but well before the end we were ceasing to care about his predicament.

Natalia Tena was a delightful Desdemona. And Marcello Magni as Roderigo lit up the stage whenever he was on it.

The set by Liz Cooke was ambitious and appeared challenging, for the cast, in its many transformations. But it was good to watch and usually provided convincing and adequate spaces for the action of the play.