""That speech is typically looked at as a speed and volume parlor game, like, 'Holy shit, look at how many words are coming out of this guy's mouth? Isn't that amazing?,' Thornton told IndieWire in a recent interview. "I always find that with text that looks absurdist, the more you treat them as not absurdist and take them at their own terms, they become even more creepy and menacing and truthful and absurdist.""
"In 'Sunset Blvd.,' director Jamie Lloyd's ongoing Broadway mounting of 'Waiting for Godot,' also starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter aka Bill and Ted, that speech is delivered by actor Michael Patrick Thornton, who plays Lucky as the mostly silent, muzzled end of a slave-master relationship with Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden). But the twist here is that, with Thornton being a wheelchair user himself, so is Lucky, which casts the character into a new 21st century perspective."
The Lucky speech in Waiting for Godot is a famously long, unpunctuated torrent that challenges performers and audiences. Michael Patrick Thornton plays Lucky in Jamie Lloyd's Broadway mounting, delivering the speech from a wheelchair and thereby reframing the character for contemporary perspective. Thornton approaches the absurdist text seriously to amplify its menace and truth rather than treating it as a speed-and-volume stunt. The speech uses philosophical and academic jargon to signal collapse of reason and the futility of progress, paralleling the tramps' predicament. Thornton memorized the speech in three weeks. The production also features Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.
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