"When the inevitable Bill and Ted reference arrives in the new Broadway Waiting for Godot, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter handle it with good grace. I won't say when, but for a flash of a moment, Beckett's immortal clowns - smelly and bruised, grizzled and incontinent - become Wyld Stallyns again. Of course it's a gimme. And of course, from a more skeptical perspective, the whole project could be described as cleaving close to the wisdom of the strippers in Gypsy."
"Jamie Lloyd is, after all, the director who's brought us Charles Xavier in Cyrano, Loki in , and Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard. But there's also something sweet - even, in its own weird way, Beckettian - about the moment. We know next to nothing of Vladimir and Estragon's pasts. When the scholar Vivian Mercier told Beckett that the two tramps "sound as if they had earned Ph.D.s," the playwright asked how he knew they hadn't."
"Celebrity vehicle though it may often be, Godot certainly isn't easy. It attracts pairs of actors who know and love each other and who want to get down to some serious work. Winter and Reeves have got the love, and they've clearly put in the time. If anything, their Didi and Gogo (Winter plays the former, the more cerebral and anxious of the two, and Reeves the latter, the disgruntled yet tender beta clown) are still a little on the solemn side."
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter portray Vladimir and Estragon in a new Broadway Waiting for Godot directed by Jamie Lloyd. The production inserts a Bill and Ted reference that briefly transforms the tramps into former garage‑rock goofballs. The actors display clear affection and preparation, with Winter as the more cerebral Vladimir and Reeves as the disgruntled yet tender Estragon. Performances trend toward solemnity, shaped by a heavy directorial hand. Lloyd's staging, described by some as minimalist, favors a grand, chilly aesthetic tied to Ivo Van Hove, while suggesting hidden pasts and long arcs toward old age.
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