THE Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, who spent most of his life living in Paris and wrote many of his plays initially in French, is especially renowned for Waiting for Godot, a comedy-drama which has two men raising many very different issues as they spend day after day sitting and walking on the edge of a rural road while they wait for the title character.
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They are occasionally joined or approached by other people who are even more questioning and less secure than they are.
The play was first staged in Paris in 1953, with its English language premiere in London in 1955. And while Beckett was pleased that theatre companies around the world were eager to present it, he objected to moves by groups to present it with women as characters.
"Women don't have prostates," he unsmilingly said, a reference to the need of one of the two main characters to head off from the roadside to urinate on occasions.
Beckett objected to moves by groups to present his play with women as characters.
When a Dutch company staged it in 1988 with an all-female cast he brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against the company. That led him to ban the presentation of any of his plays in the Netherlands, with the firm which licensed their productions continuing to abide by that after his death in 1989. But courts in various countries have continued to allow the play to be staged by women.
When Newcastle director and actor Michelle Burnitt applied to get the rights to stage it in this city with an all-female cast, she was initially told that the play was not regarded as one for women. But she pressed ahead with the application, and it will be staged at the Atwea College Creative Arts Space (CAS) theatre in Beaumont Street, Hamilton, from July 26 to August 2.
This production has two renowned female actors, Janet Gillam and Jan Hunt, as the central characters, with the pair in black business suits, and wearing black ties and bowler hats, indicating that Godot, the person they are waiting for, is very officious.
Janet Gillam plays Vladimir, who comes across as the more responsible and mature of the pair. And Jan Hunt is Estragon, who seems to be weak and helpless, and always looking for Vladimir's protection. Estragon also has a poor memory, with Vladimir at one point reminding him of things that happened the previous night. The closeness of the two comes across in the nicknames they use when speaking to each other. Vladimir is known as Didi and Estragon as Gogo.
The other people they encounter while waiting on the roadside are very different. Pozzo, played by Tracey Owens, is very demanding, and talks coldly to his slave, Lucky (Angela McKeown), who has to carry Pozzo's bags and stool, and dances to entertain him. When they re-appear in the second act, it is clear from their very different behaviour that something has happened (with the changes very amusing).
The third person who regularly comes along is Boy (Ava Marjoribanks), whose memory doesn't seem to be very good - or is he just pretending that is the case?
The cast are enjoying rehearsing the play. Jan Hunt notes that the humour has come out while they have been rehearsing, while Janet Gillam points to Vladimir increasingly struggling to find the meaning of life.
The CAS performances are on Friday and Saturday, July 26 and 27, at 7.30pm; Sunday, July 28, at 3pm; Wednesday and Thursday, July 31 and August 1, at 11am; and Friday, August 2, at 7.30pm.
Tickets, $20.50, can be bought from trybooking.com.
REVISED RETAIL
FAIR Retail, a show written by Jack Madden in 1917 when he was a student at Newcastle University and staged by the university's drama society, has been revised by Madden and Imogen Bilinsky, who was a fellow student, and singer and musician.
The show originally had a couple of songs, but it now has more, with Madden referring to it as a "half-musical".
The in-progress new version will have reading-style performances, with the songs included, at Newcastle Theatre Company's Lambton venue on Monday and Tuesday, July 22 and 23, at 7pm, as a fundraiser for the costly changes Newcastle City Council has demanded for the theatre to prevent it from catching fire.
All the money raised from sales of the $25 tickets will go to that cause. Tickets can be bought from the theatre, 4952 4958.
Madden and fellow students were working part-time at supermarkets when the play was put together, and Fair Retail is drawn from their experiences.
The satirical work is set in a supermarket run by the Pughbern company, with the employees seeing themselves as overworked and having to deal with obnoxious customers, nasty managers, and the struggles of being in the prime of life. And romantic relationships develop between some of the employees.
The cast members in the reading-style staging include: Jack Madden as a competent, though neurotic, employee; Tracey Gordon as a member of the supermarket owning family who is sent to clean up when head office sees it as a scandalous store; Roger Ly as one of two elderly female customers, who regularly makes unfair demands on the staff; and nine other actors and singers.
One of the cast, Amanda Williamson, is repeating her role from the 2017 show, as a lazy, disinterested deli worker, who only finds joy in astrology and gossip. Another actor, Meighan Winchester, doubles as a customer and the Oven Demon, a malevolent deli spirit.
