Beckettian Waiting Game for STC Waiting For Godot Cast

Life has mirrored art almost too closely for comfort during the first seven days of rehearsals for Sydney Theatre Company’s Waiting for Godot, with the cast of Richard Roxburgh, Hugo Weaving, Luke Mullins and Philip Quast engaged in an unexpected, yet somehow strangely appropriate, waiting game of their own. They’ve been waiting for a man who will never turn up. They’ve been waiting for director Tamás Ascher.

Days before rehearsals were due to commence, word came from Budapest that the arrival in Sydney of Ascher was to be delayed due to an injury. STC Artistic Director Andrew Upton stepped into the breach as caretaker director, working alongside the show’s Associate Director Anna Lengyel (a close associate of Ascher’s who also worked on STC’s 2010 Uncle Vanya).

Yesterday (October 10, 2013), Ascher’s doctors advised that he remains unable to make the long trip to Sydney and as a result Andrew Upton will now direct the production.

Andrew Upton said: “We send the great Tamás Ascher our very best wishes for a full and speedy recovery. I doubt there could be a better cast to have faced this unusual, yet strangely appropriate dilemma. Already in these first days of rehearsals, Richard, Hugo, Luke and Phillip have been truly inspiring with their intelligence and, perhaps most importantly, wonderful sense of the absurd. I think these qualities will make for a fabulous Godot for Sydney audiences.

“We’re also lucky to be working with Anna Lengyel (Associate Director), Zsolt Khell (Set Designer) and Nick Schlieper (Lighting Designer) all of whom were, along with Hugo and Richard, Uncle Vanya collaborators. The great creative team is completed by Alice Babidge (Costume Designer) and Max Lyandvert (Sound Designer),” Upton said.

Waiting near a tree, Estragon (Roxburgh) and Vladimir (Weaving) struggle to make sense of a peculiar predicament. They are waiting, full of hope, for a man named Godot - though what exactly they are hoping this encounter might bring remains unclear. Joking, bickering and musing on the profound, their shared test of endurance is interrupted by the overbearing Pozzo (Quast) and the hapless Lucky (Mullins) in Beckett’s poetic portrait of humanity’s talent for resilience.

Waiting for Godot is the most famous of Samuel Beckett’s enigmatic creations which also include Happy Days, Krapp’s Last Tape and Endgame. Of his fellow Nobel Prize-winning dramatist, Harold Pinter once said: “The farther he goes the more good it does me … He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit, the more I am grateful to him.”

Waiting for Godot

12 November to 21 December 2013.

Opening Night: Sat 16 November at 7.30pm

Sydney Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

Director: Andrew Upton. Associate Director: Anna Lengyel. Set Designer: Zsolt Khell. Costume Designer: Alice Babidge. Lighting Designer: Nick Schlieper. Sound Designer: Max Lyandvert.

Cast: Luke Mullins, Philip Quast, Richard Roxburgh, Hugo Weaving

Box Office: 02 9250 1777. sydneytheatre.com.au

Tickets: $55 - $105 (fees apply)

Pre-season Briefing: Monday 28 October 6.15pm at the Wharf

Audi Night with the Actors: Monday 25 November (post-show)

Suncorp Twentiesbecome available for Waiting for Godot from Tuesday 5 November 2013. Suncorp Twenties are released for sale every Tuesday at 9am for the following week’s performances (Monday to Sunday).