Two tramps spend each day much as the previous one, regaling each other with tales and seemingly waiting for something or someone to turn up to make life better. Sound familiar? Waiting For Godot revolutionised theatre, and though young writer Matthew Landers may have a long way to go to reach the celebrity and veneration of Samuel Becket, his script is none the less phenomenal.
This tale isn’t absurd or abstract like Godot. Landers himself plays a young down and out, rejected by his family, addicted to drugs and meths, trying to survive on the streets of London by selling (stolen) Big Issues. He meets another, older vagrant, played superbly by Graham Elwell. Elwell’s character is a child-like middle-aged man, possessed of autistic genius. After a shaky start to their relationship, Landers script takes us on a frightening and moving exploration of some of the reasons people find themselves homeless through what is essentially and remarkably a love story.
I’m not a fan of this venue usually. It’s damp, smelly, and clammy – indeed I had to move my seat as I was being dripped on. For this piece, however, it works a treat as it feels just the place these two might squat in! The design and direction (Mark Pollard) add to this feeling of “being there”. The two characters get grungier and dirtier the more the play goes on, but we become painfully aware that these two both have potentially beautiful souls. Poetic, in fact.
I won’t give away why the play is called what it is, and if you are looking for redemption, you won’t find it in the play’s harrowing and bleak last two scenes when drug addiction overpowers a new found love in the most horrible way. However, as a take on how love can potentially redeem all, and how loneliness is a self-inflicted wound, this is great stuff.
[Robin T. Barton]
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