Waiting for Godot

[moonlettuce]

Oh my god, it was amazing!

I'll preface this by saying I've never been a fan of the play. I've seen it before and I think it's dismal and depressing, but it was Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen and I would have been there if they were going to be on the stage talking about toothpaste. ("Colgate, you say, Sir Ian? How fascinating...")

However, this one? Absolutely bloody brilliant. The four actors (PS, IM, Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup) were perfect for their roles and, although the play still had that edge of bleakness to it, it was undercut by a current of almost-Vaudeville humour running through it.

We'd got to the theatre to find catwalksalone in the row behind us, so there was gleefulness before the show and during the interval ::grin::

I'd pretty much decided I was going to stage-door it, especially since they'd been selling A3 reproductions of the play's promo poster, which I'd bought along with the program.

And then it was discovered that an after-show talk was going on tonight and I was all torn! which to do?

We found out it was Patrick Stewart doing the after show talk, so I decided to stay for that. Unfortunately, both alyse and catwalksalone had to leave straight after the play because it's a school night. (I'm just not caring about that bit ::grin::)

PS came out after getting changed and did about a 20 minute talk, taking questions from the audience. He mentioned that this is only the second time he and IM have worked on stage together, the other time being in 1977 when they did Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and that when the opportunity to do WfG came up they were both very much up for it. He also mentioned that Sean Mathias (the director) offered them the play and not a specific role, leaving it up to them to decide who was going to play Gogo and who was going to play Didi. PS plays Didi and IM is Gogo, although Mathias original thought had been the other way around. He also commented that IM had suggested both of them learning both parts and alternating, to which PS was all lolz, no.

After the talk was over, we went around to the stage door. A few minutes later PS came out and stuck around to sign things for people who were waiting. I got the poster signed ::glee!::

I figured at this point that IM would have already left, but I asked the group of lasses next to us and they said they'd been there since straight after the play and IM was still in there. So we stayed and waited.

Dude! I've no idea what he was doing, but PS did an after show talk and still left 15 minutes earlier that IM!

But then IM came out, and also stuck around to sign stuff for people.

Cue me boucing with utter glee as I now have a poster of the play signed by both Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart!

::does bouncy fangirl dance of UTTER FUCKING GLEE!!!::

FEAR MAH POSTER! (And possibly my duvet cover, but mainly the poster...)



So, yes, that was tonight! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!