What it was like to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart live on stage

On Saturday evening my mom and I went to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart on Broadway in Waiting for Godot (with Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley). It did not disappoint!

© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons

When they entered the stage it took me a minute to process that I was actually watching them. I'm not sure I've ever seen such fine stage acting and it was really just enjoyable to watch these people I admire interacting so fluidly with a physicality that is lost in film.

These two gentlemen were huge fixtures of my adolescence. In a time when many of us are grasping for heroes, when popular media fixates on moral complexities, when many of us have lost faith in organized religion, we're still hard-wired to look for the moral to the story. We still need reassurance, even if it's symbolic,  that classic archetypal mentors are there to guide us, that "good" is not lost, that life has meaning. Personally I can't help but gravitate to them. Who doesn't need a Gandalf or Prof. Xavier? Who doesn't want Captain Picard's decisiveness and bravery?

The irony about what drew me to these actors is that the play itself is an absurdist reflection on the meaning of existence. It's full of moral complexities,  ambiguous and contradictory and open-ended. The lives of its two non-heros, Estragon and Vladimir, are meaningful if only for the brief identification with one another that life has allowed them. That was the salient point for me (because really, what other option is there?) Stewart and McKellen manage to balance the tragedy of meaningless existence with just the right touch of humor and camaraderie.

Billy Crudup was also simply astounding as "Lucky". I'd seen him in the film Big Fish but I had no idea he was also a talented stage actor. The play is relatively physical for all involved, but Crudup's character was in constant motion. Hensley was also fantastic as "Pozzo". I can't imagine having the energy these four had to sustain more than seven shows per week (including its pair, No Man's Land).

This was my first play on Broadway, and I'm really happy to have gone. So inspiring to see four people who are so very top notch in their craft. I also learned that British people pronounce it GOD-ot in contradiction to the US go-DOT. Apparently the matter is hotly contested, as Beckett himself didn't provide any definitive guidance. Another inspiring lesson in ambiguity.

Want to get in on it? There's still time; the show plays at the Cort Theatre and will be closing on March 30 after a five-month run!