Escape from Godot
Reviewed by Stephen Fife
Mister & Mischief
Through March 24
RECOMMENDED
Escape from Godot, currently running at The YARD Theatre, is an interactive theatrical puzzle that starts with a funny idea and goes in an interesting direction with it. How interesting a direction depends on the audience members with whom you see the show.
The inspired idea at the heart of this hour-long event is making fun of the litigiousness of Samuel Beckett’s estate, which has continued the playwright’s obsession with zealously protecting the copyright of his work. This famously extends to the stage directions of his plays, and once caused Beckett to shut down a production of Endgame (I think) that a director had transposed to an abandoned subway tunnel after an apocalyptic disaster. More recently, his estate shuttered a production of Godot that cast black actors in the leads and allowed them to improvise on Beckett’s dialogue, as well as another production featuring women as Didi and Gogo. (This second shut-down was eventually overturned on appeal.)
So the setup of Escape from Godot is this: an audience of 8 people convene at The YARD Theatre in East Hollywood (near the former site of Sacred Fools), where they are informed that the production of Waiting for Godot that they have come to see is about to be shut down by the attorneys for the Beckett estate — but, if they hurry, they might be able to get in a performance. Also, the stage manager has quit, so the audience has to run the show. In order to do this, they must uncover various clues that have been concealed around the playing space. And of course they must find these before the shut-down notice arrives from the Beckett attorneys.
On the night I attended, the audience included the friend who came with me, plus another friend who just happened to be there; also, a family consisting of a mother, a father and a daughter; and two people who didn’t know any of us or each other.
When we entered the space, the two leads, here renamed Gigi (Phil Ward) and Dodo (Pablo Marz), were already onstage. Eventually our crew was able to unearth enough clues to get the next two actors, Pizza (Phil Daddario) and Fortune (Jim Merson), onstage as well. The ensemble for this performance included Lisa Bierman as the Messenger and Silvie Zamora as the Usher.
Everyone was fine — but the acting wasn’t the point. Solving the puzzle was. “The show is the game and the game is the show,” we were told at the outset. I’m happy to report that our group was able to solve the game’s riddles to the point of getting to the end of the show. I gather that on other nights this isn’t the case.
The creators of this puzzle play are the husband-and-wife team of Andy and Jeff Crocker. This limited run follows a successful debut at last year’s Fringe Festival. While there is a gimmicky side to using Beckett’s masterwork as an excuse for what is basically a party game, it worked for me. Waiting for Godot is a turning point for modern drama, but in my lifetime it has morphed from holy writ to something all too familiar, almost kitschy, making it ripe for parody. Beckett’s play is a journey to nowhere, a riddle which has no solution, a game from which there is no escape. Escape from Godot gives rise to a strange sense of freedom, both by treating a masterpiece with such casual disregard and by dealing with questions of existence for which there are actual answers.
The YARD Theatre, 4319 Melrose Ave., East Hollywood; weekends, several shows each day, through Mar. 24. Escapefromgodot.brownpapertickets.com. Running time: 55 minutes with no intermission.
