Worth the wait

>> Godot's absurdity hits home at Centaur

by AMY BARRATT

Well, it's taken Ben Barnes, an Irish director, to create the English community's first truly "Montreal" production of the season. You might think that Michel Tremblay's For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, Centaur's season opener, would have fit the bill, but that production could have been set in Thunder Bay as far as I was concerned.

Centaur's Waiting for Godot isn't literally set in Montreal, of course. This quintessential drama of the absurd takes place in the middle of nowhere; it's just that, in this production, it's a strangely familiar middle-of-nowhere.

Designer David Gaucher has tailor-made his set for the larger of Centaur's two houses. The first impression as you enter the theatre is that the entire backstage area has been gutted, exposing the back wall of the building. This is not the case, obviously, but Gaucher's scenic painters (Steven Barkley and Larissa Fassler) have taken great pains to match the look and colour of their faux bricks to the original brick walls lining the house.

The resulting space is an urban rather than a rural landscape, that is reminiscent of many Montreal neighbourhoods. Instead of the sky for a backdrop, Vladimir and Estragon get a brick wall, against which even the moon is a mere projection, thus emphasizing both the claustrophobia of their lives and the theatricality of the piece.

Playwright Samuel Beckett, born and raised in Ireland, read French at Oxford, then eventually moved to Paris and began writing in his adopted language. The English version of Godot is Beckett's own translation, tinged with Irish idioms ("Get up till I embrace you"). Director Ben Barnes has pointed out that our city shares those Irish/French roots, and that makes Beckett a natural to produce here.

One nod to our bilingual city comes in the character of the Boy (played on opening night by Yul Burton, who will be alternating in the role with Adam Baylin-Stern), who brings messages from Monsieur Godot. He speaks entirely in French, and Vladimir communicates with him as best he can in a mixture of two languages.

Not only is it a very Montreal scene, but it accentuates the confusion and frustration of Vladimir in the situation.

Nicholas Rice and Michel Perron are, simply, a great team as Vladimir and Estragon, respectively. Barnes has them play up the comedic--even vaudevillian--elements of the piece, so we can't help being reminded of those other great absurdists, Abbott and Costello. Rice, an actor based in Toronto, isn't well known to local audiences, but he was one of the best things about last year's Jerusalem: The Musical (JMC Productions). It's a joy to see under-used local actor Michel Perron on the Centaur boards again for the first time since The Master and Margarita (1994). He makes the part his own.

Rounding out the cast are Jim Warren and Peter Batakliev as Pozzo and Lucky, that infamous master­slave team. Warren's Pozzo is a ham actor who is incapable of considering anyone but himself. Batakliev is so amazingly focused as Lucky that it hurts to look at him--and I mean that as a compliment. Luc Prairie's lighting gives us just enough magic to sustain the dreamlike nature of the work, without resorting to a prettiness that would clash with the play's dark view of mankind.

Waiting for Godot, to April 18 at Centaur; 288-3161; $17­37