Ensemble Distinction

the moments in Leon Rubin's production of Waiting For Godot, Beckett's postmodernist black comedy of obliviousness, fear, paralysis, and empty hope. This is a play where shape matters most importantly, and where the grace-notes lie in the gallowshumour . Pain in Godot is as real as Estragon 's last carrot or his tight boots, but the pain is not in the language of the two vagrants; it is in the silences. Because there is nothing definitive to say about reality, Vladimir and Estragon invent small talk and find delight in even the most trivial diversions of sound and mime. Despite man's tears (which are copious), the world becomes a circus, where Pozzo and his hapless slave, Lucky, perform their carnival of torture to the tramps' uncomprehending amusement. Then Pozzo goes blind, Lucky dumb, and the carnival ends in a silence that rings with painfully mocking emptiness . Finally there is only the bare-ribbed tree, and yet the tramps cannot move out of their wasteland. They must wait forever for Godot - God 0, God the nada of existence, a false god, someone invented to console man. Of course he will never come. They must learn to balance hope against despair: "Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned" (St. Augustine). Comedy and tragedy, we are often reminded, are simply a beat away from each other, and in Leon Rubin's production at the Third Stage this belief was vindicated. As the parable-obsessed Vladimir , Brian Bedford became an earnest soap-box orator in the gathering darkness. Edward Atienza as the lame-footed Estragon , in baggy Buster Keaton trousers and candy-striped under-pants, was the very epitome of a genteel, ceremonious, amnesiac with perpetual nightmares and a faulty memory. Both actors exploited their knowledge of British vaudeville and Shakespearean clowning to canter through conversation , sport through slapstick, and fill in the silences with tableaux of acute vulnerability . They were Godot's fools, always wanting to confirm the impression of their own futile existence. Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 19, No. 4 (Hiver 1984-85 Winter) In Jun Maeda's stark wasteland of blighted tree and tangled branches - a spidery network of death - Andreas Katsulas as Pozzo, and Paul Zimet as Lucky were quite effective, but their acting styles did not blend with Bedford's or Atienza's. Katsulas' barrel-chested Pozzo was a monocled monster. a circus ringmaster who, at the end, was as much a victim of arbitrary fate as was his slave, Lucky. Zimet did a good pantomime and dance as Lucky, but his climactic .speech of scholarly gibberish was not given all the mad colour it needed. Nevertheless, we sensed the gravedigger putting on his forceps, and the air growing full of man's silent cries. KEITH GAREBIAN Mississauga, Ontario NOTES 1. The word Zannis has varying forms: Zane, Zanne, Zany, or Zani. Derived from Gianni, it is sometimes a proper noun but usually a name for the role of masked valet or comic servant. 2. Ruth Nevo, Comic Transformations in Shakespeare (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), p. 115. 3. Leo Kirschbaum, Character and Characterization in Shakespeare (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), p. 10. 4. Ibid., p. 30. 5. C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1966), p. 93. 6. Donald M. Frame, Introduction to Tartuffe, in Tartuffe and Other Plays by Moliere (Toronto: Signet Classics, 1967), p. 238. Ensemble Distinction In a fundamental sense this was a season of ensemble distinction, though it was not immediately apparent as such. Duncan Mcintosh and Christopher Newton's adaptation of the 1933 Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach hit, Roberta, was impressive for only two reasons: Peter 143 Wingate's bright, gaudy up-beat design, and Michelle Emelle's marvel of quick costume-changes in a salon scene. Otherwise the production was wounded by the limitations of the small stage at the Royal George, by blocking that usually favoured straight lines parallel to the footlights, and singing that was either careless or chilly. The period argot ("bee's knees," "giggle water," "you're swell") had its antiquated appeal, but the mummified audience nearly embalmed the...