1st Night Photos: Sting & McCartney Get to GodotDate: 7 May 2009
Two rock titans, Sting and Paul McCartney, were on hand to applaud two theatre titans, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, as they opened last night (6 May 2009, previews from 30 April) in Sean Mathias’ hugely anticipated revival of Samuel Beckett’s 1955 classic Waiting for Godot at the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.
At the curtain call, McKellen and Stewart delighted the opening night audience with a vaudevillian soft-shoe shuffle before tossing their hats onto the empty stage from the wings.
In Beckett’s masterpiece, McKellen and Stewart are Estragon and Vladimir, two tramps who pass the time by a deserted road as they wait for the mysterious Godot. They’re joined in the cast by Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup as Pozzo and Lucky. The child actors chosen to alternate in the role of a boy in the West End are: George Sear, Richard Linnell, Sam Walton and Tom Barker (who performed last night).
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PHOTOS BY DAN WOOLLER FOR WHATSONSTAGE.COM.
For 1st Night Photos, our Whatsonstage.com photographer Dan Wooller was on hand for the curtain call and after party at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, where other first night guests included Steven Berkoff and Simon Merrells, just seen at the Haymarket in On the Waterfront, and former prime minister John Major.
Prior to London, Waiting for Godot completed an eight-week tour. It recently extended its limited West End season by a month to 26 July (See News, 28 Apr 2009). The production is designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis, with lighting by Paul Pyant, and produced by the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company, in partnership with Duncan C Weldon, as the first offering in a second season of in-house programming, for which Mathias has been appointed as artistic director. Subsequent productions in Mathias’ season – which follows the 2007/8 inaugural season helmed by Jonathan Kent – are expected to be announced imminently.
- by Terri Paddock
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