The wait begins! Two-time Tony Award nominee and multiple Olivier Award winner Jamie Lloyd returns to Broadway with a new production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. This marks Lloyd's first Broadway project since his acclaimed revival of Sunset Blvd. opened in late 2024.
This is not Reeves and Winters' first project together. The pair has a friendship that spans 35 years and began during the filming of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in 1989.
Waiting for Godot is a landmark play by Samuel Beckett, first performed in 1953. It is a quintessential example of absurdist theater, exploring themes of existentialism, meaninglessness, and the human condition. The play revolves around two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who spend their days waiting for a mysterious figure named Godot. Godot never arrives, leaving the pair in a perpetual state of uncertainty and inaction.
The minimalist setting—a barren landscape with a single tree—reflects the stark simplicity of the play's themes, while the characters' repetitive dialogue and absurd actions underscore the futility of their wait. Beckett’s work challenges traditional narrative structures, focusing instead on the absurdity of human existence and the struggle to find purpose in a seemingly indifferent universe.
The play is open to various interpretations, making it a cornerstone of modern theater and philosophy. Some view Godot as a metaphor for hope, faith, or a higher power, while others interpret the play as a commentary on the cyclical nature of life and the inevitability of death. Despite its somber themes, Waiting for Godot contains moments of humor, often derived from the characters’ interactions and wordplay, which provide relief from the existential weight of the story.
Beckett’s groundbreaking approach to storytelling has cemented the play as a timeless work that continues to provoke thought and discussion among audiences and scholars worldwide.
Lloyd’s take on Beckett is an especially disorienting, purgatorial one – at one point, Gogo and Didi approach a literal blinding light at the end of the tunnel, only to turn back. But it is more coolly strange than spiritually disquieting, seeming to strain for provocation without need. The introduction of the mysterious Pozzo (Brandon J Dirden) and the enslaved Lucky (Michael Patrick Thornton) throw a wrench into the duo’s day and into the show’s polished limbo. Dirden, who is Black, plays Pozzo with more than a dash of Calvin Candie, Leonardo DiCaprio’s unforgettably sadistic and dandyish plantation owner from Django Unchained. Thornton, who is white and uses a wheelchair, appears without Lucky’s standard rope or Pozzo’s whip – the production forgoes almost all props – but bound with a gimp mask. The racial inversion of the invoked history of US enslavement suggests the arbitrariness of human cruelty. But though Thornton turns Lucky’s famously impermeable monologue – an erudite-seeming rambling on the command to “think!” – into a spellbinding swirl, there’s a ghoulish, overdone quality to their intrusions that tip the show into uncomfortable sensory overwhelm.
The production seems intent on reaching new audiences and making the play feel more accessible to people who know “Bill & Ted” and “The Matrix” rather than Beckett. Some will be hooked, and others will surely find the repetition unbearable and slip out at intermission. “Godot” has always divided audiences. Reeves and Winter may not save the world this time, but their endless adventure in Beckett’s wasteland is a strange, curious, and surprisingly affecting experiment.
| 1956 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1957 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1971 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1981 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1988 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2005 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2006 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2009 | Broadway |
Roundabout Revival Broadway |
| 2010 | West End |
Return Engagement [West End] West End |
| 2013 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 2015 | Off-Broadway |
Gare St Lazare Ireland and Dublin Theatre Festival Production Off-Broadway |
| 2017 | West End |
Arts Theatre Revival West End |
| 2021 | Off-Broadway |
TFANA's Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| 2023 | Off-Broadway |
Theatre for a New Audience Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| West End |
West End |
|
| West End |
West End |
|
| 2025 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
Videos