Waiting for Godot, Yorick Ensemble, Great Road Church, Acton, Massachusetts, USA

Directed by Rachel Hall

Featuring Josh Telepman (Vladimir), Michael Jay (Estragon), Quinton Kappel (Pozzo), Tom Marsh (Lucky), and Curtis Keene (Boy)

14 September 2024

Review by Paul Shields

Quinton Kappel is excellent in the role of Pozzo at Great Road Church in Acton, Massachusetts. Rachel Hall directs Kappel and the rest of the cast in Yorick Ensemble’s late-summer production of Waiting for Godot, which takes place on a raised playing area in the sanctuary. The audience, too, is excellent. They are game for these games, ready to laugh, appreciative of the play. Following the final moon and the last words, I overhear behind me thoughts and interpretations: the characters are in Purgatory . . . Pozzo and Lucky are one person. I, eavesdropper, am intrigued by their analysis, their insights.

I catch wind of Yorick Ensemble’s Godot via social media. Yorick Ensemble calls itself a “fringe” theater company. On their website, they explain: “We are also a theatre without a home, meaning each project will be specifically developed for a particular space.”¹ The company is thus similar to the tramps they portray with their Godot rendition.

Before the show ever gets going, a mime appears onstage. A French voice comes through the speakers and discusses what I discern are the policies for the performance. The mime acts out the rules. He exits stage left.

The set contains a tree but also other one-time trees—stumps. Beneath each of the former trees is a mat with a yellow, mosaic design. The mats are dingy, faded, and taped down. The uncut-down tree is in a planter upstage left. It is whitish in color with a few branches. Pinkish-gray curtains hang as a backdrop, tattered with holes and tears.

Hall opts to split Vladimir and Estragon up at the opening of the play.² Alone, Gogo (Michael Jay) uses a stump as a stone to work on the boot. The bearded tramp wears a dark suit with tails, white shirt, plaid vest, green bowtie, brown boots, fingerless gloves, and hat. He has a green boutonniere on his lapel. When we see his bare feet, band-aids indicate some type of sore or injury. I don’t know if these are Jay’s or Gogo’s injuries. His co-tramp, Didi (Josh Telepman, founder of Yorick Ensemble), is also bearded and wears glasses. He has on a gray jacket (no tails), white shirt, vest, tie, dark pants, black boots, and hat. His is a burgundy boutonniere. Both actors have a fine sense of the comedy of Beckett’s dialogue and their situation.

According to her virtual Director’s Note to the production, Hall sees in Beckett’s drama a “beautiful, ugly little love story.”³ During the play, Hall plays up the love story between the tramps, having them move in for what seems will be a kiss. They disembrace without meeting lips, but the romance is apparent in that moment.

The pre-show mime turns out to be Lucky (Tom Marsh). He has makeup that suggests a skull beneath his facial flesh. It reminds me, as I write, of that line from “Perfect Blue Buildings” by the Counting Crows: “I got bones beneath my skin.” Lucky wears black and gray clothes with black, rubber deck boots or galoshes. His hair is gray. Marsh delivers the think adroitly, as the rest of the characters go into their frenzy.

Kappel’s Pozzo is a pleasure to watch. He is bald and lean. His long coat is red leather or some leather-like material. His shoes combine blue suede with blue patent leather. Yorick Ensemble’s virtual program lists a range of “influences” for their production, including the film American Psycho.⁴ I now wonder if Pozzo’s dashing attire in Hall’s show is a nod to Patrick Bateman, the violent main character of that movie in which a dapper man turns out to be a serial slayer. Pozzo gnaws chicken, chucks bones, smokes a pipe, sprays his throat for performance, and shares his need to be invited to sit down. In Act 2, he impresses with his physical comedy, though in a sad state of unseeing suffering. He worms his way across the stage in a locomotion of ups and downs toward the far tree stump stage left. I could envision Kappel as Hamm down the road, leading the last of humanity through the rigours of a gray day. In fact, I think Kappel and Marsh could be a very good Hamm-and-Clov team. Give them sidearms and put them in an old lodging house—they would kill as Ben and Gus.

At the end of each act, tiny lights shine through the pinkish-gray curtains at the back of the stage, and blue strips of lights glow overhead. A moon on a stick appears from the wings stage left, a funny take on the arrival of that celestial stone. The boy (Curtis Keene) is dressed in a white T-shirt, blue jeans with suspenders, and gray and brown shoes.

Crowd noises vary at Great Road Church, from chuckles to hearty laughter, to expressions of “Aww” or maybe “Ohh” during the more touching moments. Yorick Ensemble, led here by Hall, boasts a funny, well-choreographed Godot for attendees at their makeshift Acton venue. 

To their next home, on.

Notes

1. “About Yorick Ensemble,” Yorick Ensemble, www.yorickensemble.com/about, accessed 3 Oct. 2024.

2. For a discussion of the revised opening of the play, see James Knowlson, Introduction, in The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett Volume 1: Waiting for Godot, eds. Knowlson and Dougald McMillan (New York: Grove Press, 2019), p. xiii.

3. Rachel Hall, “Director’s Note,” digital program for Waiting for Godot, Great Road Church, Acton, Massachusetts, USA, September 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 2024, Yorick Ensemble, accessed 3 Oct. 2024.

4. Digital program for Waiting for Godot, dir. Rachel Hall, Great Road Church, Acton, Massachusetts, USA, September 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 2024, Yorick Ensemble, accessed 3 Oct. 2024.

Paul Shields is an associate professor of English at Assumption University. He teaches courses in literary theory, writing, and dramatic literature, among others. He lives in Worcester, Massachusetts.