Time Out Australia
Jason Catlett
April 9, 2015
4/5 stars 31 Mar-09 May, Theatre, Walsh Bay Critics Choice
Andrew Upton and Hugo Weaving re-team for more Beckett
You’re unlikely ever to find a more enjoyable production of Samuel Beckett’s bleak absurdist drama than this one directed by Andrew Upton for the Sydney Theatre Company. As in Beckett’s earlier and far more celebrated Waiting for Godot, almost nothing happens, repeatedly. Like his later underrated Happy Days, the non-action takes place in some vaguely post-apocalyptic world inhabited by a few bored and bewildered weirdos. They reminisce incoherently, bicker and talk rubbish, doing nothing more significant than putting a handkerchief over someone’s head, or moving a ladder pointlessly from window to window. Beckett’s astonishing achievement was to write challenging and truly revolutionary plays within these apparently disqualifying constraints. The wonderful achievement of Upton and his crew here is to make that horrendous landscape of human worthlessness a delight to watch.