Show Pics: McKellen & Stewart Start Godot Waiting

Prior to its West End opening at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in May, the Sean Mathias-directed production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is currently on an eight-week national tour, and below are a selection of the recently-released production shots.

Starring Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup, Waiting for Godot opened at Malvern Theatres on 5 March and is currently in Milton Keynes (16-21 March). It visits Brighton, Bath, Norwich, Edinburgh and Newcastle before reaching London on 6 May (previews from 30 April).

In Waiting for Godot, two tramps, Vladimir (Stewart) and Estragon (McKellen, making his Beckett debut), are waiting on a deserted road. As they pass the time, they ask the question: “Will Mr Godot ever come?”. In the National Theatre’s NT2000 poll, theatre professionals voted Waiting for Godot the most significant English language play of the 20th century.

The play’s last West End outing was Peter Hall’s 50th anniversary production, which transferred in 2006 to the Arts Theatre (See 1st Night Photos, 10 Oct 2006), where Hall directed the English-language world premiere in 1955 when he was the theatre’s 25-year-old artistic director.