Waiting For Godot

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Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

One of the best plays of the 20th Century is coming to Scotland in a touring production next year.

I urge you to go and see it ... for it will be an experience you will never see again in your lifetime ...

Whether you want to see ...

Magneto and Professor X ...

or

Gandalf and Captain Jean-Luc Picard ...

... this play sees two of our finest actors ... winners of every superlative and accolade you can bestow on them ... two of the biggest names in cinema ... two luminaries of the acting world ... heck! two of the best actors on the planet ... TOGETHER!! ... then GO SEE IT!!!

I have my tickets booked already for the Edinburgh show in April ... and because I'm a regular, I'll have the opporchancity to meet them at the after-show wrap-up party.

How can you miss this???

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tibbie dunbar · Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 25

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart...Oh, how I envy you Blackadder!

I have tried to persuade my partner to make the trip to Bath or Brighton to see this performance but to no avail. Waiting for Godot at the Nuffield in Southampton ten years ago was more than enough Samuel Beckett for the family philistine.

This production will be the theatre event of the year Blackadder - have a brilliant evening

Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

It can be a long and boring play for people who don't get in to Theatre regularly, Tibbie. But I think with McKellen and Stewart in it ... they'll raise the show into something approximating an EVENT! AND I'M COUNTING DOWN THE SECONDS!!!!

Have a go at the old b****** AGAIN!!!

PS ... are you related to my Irish auntie, Tibbie Shure??

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tibbie dunbar · Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 25

Xcotty · Admin Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 1377 Location: Highlands

tibbie dunbar · Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 25

Hey Xcotty. Reading your posts, I see you are still as bonkers as ever! Keep up the good work

Xcotty · Admin Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 1377 Location: Highlands

Nothing much changes with me Tibbie.
A bit older, but never in mind, but I like it that way.
Great to see you back my friend.

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Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

Meanwhile ... we're still Waiting for bloody Godot!!!

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Xcotty · Admin Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 1377 Location: Highlands

Perhaps he missed his flight?
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Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

He doesn't fly!

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Xcotty · Admin Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 1377 Location: Highlands

How do you know?
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Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

Like Paul McCartney .............. no wings!

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tibbie dunbar · Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 25

Did you catch the Culture Show on BBC2 last night, LB?
Great interview with Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and the director Sean Mathias with a wee sneaky preview of Waiting for Godot.
Oh! lucky you

Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

Missed it because of sickness and throwing up all day & night!

Maybe it'll be repeated. In the meantime ... here's the poster ...

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trickybizz · Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 148 Location: uk

I waited for a bus

Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

It's not coming either! Why not walk all your fat off!!!

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trickybizz · Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 148 Location: uk

Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

I think any fat I was accumulating has all disappeared down the porcelain tube in the last three days! Been throwing up and dumping like there's no tomorrow.

And I'm ill!

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Bluemoon · Joined: 23 Sep 2008 Posts: 171 Location: SW from Glasgow

Hope you haven't got what I had

BoB · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:34 pm Post subject:

Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

The Manor was fully upgraded to modern standards two years ago.

I wish I had been too!

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Mad Welshie · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:18 pm Post subject:

Wow what a modern upgrading you have had BA

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FAO BoB

Cailean · Joined: 18 Nov 2007 Posts: 38 Location: Germany

I was on Amazon a few days back and saw James Hoff's "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" for 1 pound 99. I had heard so much about it that I thought, "Well, at that price...."

It arrived yesterday and I started to read it. It's really excellent - I recommend it wholeheartedly.
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Alba gu brath

Guest · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 7:09 pm Post subject:

Lord B, you can watch the Culture Show in BBCiPlayer!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis..._Show_Uncut_2008_2009_Episode_25/

Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

Only three weeks to go now until the Show opens in Edinburgh ... and I can barely contain my excitement!

And Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup are in it too!!!

Cue singing and dancing .... I'm going to heaven, I'm going to heaven ...

Here's a review from Milton Keynes!

Review - Waiting for Godot
March 17, 2009
Milton Keynes Theatre

Date reviewed 16th March

The National Theatre poll NT2000 voted Waiting for Godot the most significant English language play of the twentieth century. When it opened in 1953 there had never been a play like it. It merged genres: music-hall, variety, comedy and poetry jostle with tension and violence as this play moves through circles of repetition and non-sequitur to construct a tragic-comic commentary on the human condition. It was a play that was to redefine what was possible in theatre and it thrilled and perplexed its contemporary audience in equal measure.

This current production of Waiting for Godot, directed by Sean Mathias, is no less exciting or entertaining. He brings together a truly inspirational cast of actors: Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan as Vladimir and Estragon are supported by Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup. And joining these giants of British theatre are two local boys, Jason Battersby and Gabriel Steele who share the role of the boy.

The rapport between Stewart and McKellan has its own magic, and they move through the conflicting moods of the play, with a tenderness and understanding that feels very special. Vladimir’s optimism and energy is perfectly balanced by McKellan’s dour northern gloominess as Estragon. The play lends itself to any number of interpretations. It is political, religious, a commentary on the human condition and a meditation on salvation. Bringing a unique combination of gravitas and lightness of touch to their interpretation of the roles McKellan and Stewart navigate their way around these concerns with admirable deftness and an infectious delight in the material. We may not always understand what is going on, but we can certainly take pleasure in it.

Supporting them are Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup in the roles of Pozzo and Lucky respectively. They bring to the play its most surreal moments, moving across the stage in a mode which is both of the play and simultaneously completely different from it. Callow’s blustering Showman who always has the whip-hand allows for some edgily comic moments in which fear and laughter are held in terrifying balance which Callow manages with great presence and flair. When in the second act he makes the transition from brutal circus master into blinded supplicant he does so with poignant credibility.

As his willing slave, Lucky, Ronald Pickup only has one speech, but it’s spectacular: circular, meaningless and embedded with philosophical insight. Studding the centre of the play, it describes all the theoretical themes that are at the heart of it: the pointless enterprise of intellectualism in a world that despises thinking; the spectacle of watching one human being on display; the gap between language and meaning; the desire for enlightenment and salvation. Pickup delivers his speech with precisely the disconnected dignity it requires for him to emerge as a tragic casualty of the post-war obsession with the search for meaning. Lucky has his Godot in Pozzo and he is shackled to him, inescapably and unconditionally.

Gabriel Steele, playing the boy on the opening of this production in Milton Keynes, brought something fresh and clear to the play in stark contrast to the murky convolutions of the other characters. He played the role with great poise and stillness, and brought to it the shining authority of youthfulness, lit by a simple white light in the centre of the stage. His performance was mature and credible and sat surprisingly comfortably alongside those of the rest of the cast.

The production is staged upon an astonishingly beautiful set for which Stephen Brimson Lewis is to be congratulated. It is constructed as a bombed-out theatre, complete with ornate and disintegrating proscenium arch, pieces of fallen masonry and a tree growing through a hole in its wrecked stage. Technically it is a masterpiece, allowing characters to fall into inexplicable voids and emerge into a destroyed and alienating landscape through its various holes and fissures; visually it endorses the themes of the play and its austere majesty and ruined beauty perfectly support Mathias’ masterly interpretation.

It has been billed as ‘The Theatre Event of the Year’ and it would be hard to find a production as consistently magical throughout.

Review by Claire Steele

I repeat ... 'm going to heaven, I'm going to heaven ...

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Lord Blackadder · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 2953

Only 2 weeks to go now!!! YAAAAY!!!!

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