Draw back the crimson curtain. It’s a vague summer afternoon here in New York City — the weather has spun its little gray kaleidoscope of rain and clouds far too many a time for the atmosphere to be determinate — and the matinee has begun, no outrageous bugles or theme music to be heard of. On the stage sits Estragon (Nathan Lane), growing increasingly frustrated with a boot stuck on his bare, scabbed foot. Eventually, he is joined by Vladimir (Bill Irwin), tall and all sharp, ungainly edges, who proceeds to muse aloud about the two thieves who witnessed — or did they? –Jesus on a cross and were alternatively saved, damned, or not even there at all.

According to the subtitle, this is meant to be a “tragicomedy in two acts”. And, consequently, a pale plot does unravel. As the minutes tick by, Lane and Irwin to and fro in a landscape consisting primarily of a naked tree (playwright Samuel Beckett‘s decorating requests went no further than that) and some rocks and mounds, added by set designer Santo Loquasto. They bicker, embrace, exchange hats and curses ( Estragon: “Gonococcus! Spirochet!”) and, ultimately, wait for Godot. In the midsection of every act, they are joined by the jovial, overbearing and aristocratic Pozzo (John Goodman), who keeps his servant Lucky (John Glover) on a rope, with the latter dragging around a portable loony housewife’s kitchen: rusty pans, picnic baskets, chicken bones and the like. Yet everything — foolish arguments, Lane’s naps, Irwin’s musical ditties — sooner or later, are meant to pass the time. Godot never comes, by the way, but the audience knows this instinctively. The question lies not in Godot’s arrival but in those in-between moments, the perpetual anticipation and that rubbery tension of interaction between the actors.

This is a performance not a play. More than anything, this script requires the actors to adapt and overwhelm the characters.  As much as the Beckett estate chews the gum of its own copyrights and demands integrity for scenery and zero improvisation, the script falls and now belongs to the director, Anthony Page. The script, abstract enough to be universally applicable, folds itself up a little in the process of being interpreted by the cast and crew. Having read the play beforehand, I personally expected more of a tragedy than a comedy, an auditorium weighted by silence. Instead, Nathan Lane’s antics brought the audience to laughter: sarcastic comments, whip-playing, grunts and groans and off-hand remarks elicited smiles. Any pearly theories of existential questions, Christian theology threading its way through the text or overarching, universal themes of loneliness disintegrated into dust on Bill Irwin’s trampy coat. In their stead, a series of professional actors emerged, pronouncing the speeches of a playwright who, in the end, may have wanted to emphasize the absurdity of it all — grown men saying phrases not their own, creating a bit of alternative reality from a puff of words and waiting for someone who isn’t coming, ever. Yes, that quiet human desperation is always there, I think, but in theater it’s inflated a little, like Pozzo, the self-proclaimed “nimble-dirigible”. The process of converting a play into a performance is never easy, and it yields an entirely different experience — reading the script is incomparable to watching this performance.

And yet, this production deserves a viewing. The gap between the characters printed in black and white on bound paper and those very same figures blown into human form is tree-shaped and enormous, but here, right in front of you, is the playwright’s vision being transposed onto a stage. Anthony Page took some liberties, granted the dialog a more comedic spin and left some leeway for a thought-provoking delivery. Not exactly what I had in mind, but theater of the absurd is meant to poke one’s expectations.

Waiting for Godot may be timeless and, for (Gogo and Didi), a bit pointless. But if you’re looking for student-rush tickets, the boisterous line at the box office is worth the wait.