In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, two companions linger beneath a barren tree, filling the hours with conversation, quarrels, and consolation – all while anticipating the arrival of a third figure, who never arrives. Everything happens, and nothing happens. Travellers come and go, time bends, and meaning – tantalizing but evanescent – suggests itself … but slips through their grasp.
In Coal Mine’s eleventh season opener, running until October 5, acclaimed actors Alexander Thomas and Ted Dykstra take on the iconic roles of Vladimir and Estragon, under the direction of Kelli Fox. Rounding out the cast are Jim Mezon as Pozzo, Simon Bracken as Lucky and Kole Parks as The Boy. For Thomas and Dykstra, the production is equal parts daunting and liberating. With the enigmatic and tragicomic play having been described as essential yet “unknowable”, finding a way in has been critical. And, they insist, the playwright provides it. “I don’t know if I perceive that space as strange, given the humour that emerges from the bleakness,” explains Thomas. “Beckett did all the work, so if you can follow his map, you won’t undercut anything. That’s the real challenge.”
Dykstra concurs. “A lot of the humour and despair is just there regardless, so I try not to think about it.” That said, “there are specific sections that really require a knowledge, understanding, and fondness for a Laurel and Hardy kind of sensibility and rhythm: very fast, very crisp. That is daunting, and requires us to be sharp mentally.”
Relationship
Beckett’s text thus demands surrender, yet exactitude. So much of Godot rests on the dynamic between its two tramps: a connection that must feel deep-seated and inevitable, even as it is improvised anew each night.
The duo’s real-life connection both equips and energizes them for this challenge. As Thomas explains, the relationship of Coal Mine’s Vladimir and Estragon is “primarily based on our connection, interactions, and chemistry with each other as individuals.” He recalls how, “even though [Dykstra] had cast me as the lead in Between Riverside and Crazy, he had never seen me act. His sense as an Artistic Director told him I would be right, based on personal interaction with me. But ironically, Ted was out of town working during that whole process. He didn’t see the table read, never saw a rehearsal, or any of the performances.”
Likewise, Dykstra’s “instinct that we could do Vladimir and Estragon is based purely on trusting that chemistry,” Thomas continues. “And that’s what we’ve done. So the whole journey is a surprising discovery. And at the same time, it feels entirely right and natural. When I look at it objectively, it was a pretty bold choice on Ted’s part.” Dykstra is confident: “Alex and I love each other very much. As humans, we have a lot in common – a way of looking at the world that is very similar. So I think both of us are really comforted by the other’s presence. This will pay off in spades, I think.”
Speed and staging
As they chat during rehearsals, the duo – though armed with their mutual comfort — are feeling the burn of the work. Dykstra is blunt: “The speed at which we all agree a lot of it should go at is a phenomenally difficult thing to achieve, because my brain will have to be so much faster than it is at present! Getting to the point of letting go and staying relaxed, while allowing these words and ideas to pour forth, is what will make it thrilling.”
For Thomas, Fox has been “a godsend”: “It has been liberating to work with a director with whom I have a working relationship”. And she has situated the play within today’s increasingly authoritarian political climate, by pointing directly at lines such as Estragon’s “We’ve lost our rights?” and Vladimir’s reply, “We got rid of them.”
Waiting for Godot may speak to vast questions and rhythms, but the relationship it depicts blossoms most fully in intimate spaces: “This play was originally done in a tiny theatre in Paris, one much like The Coal Mine”, notes Dykstra. And “the intimacy of a 100-seat theatre is one of the main attractions of our venue. To be just a few feet away from actors performing this kind of play, is – if they’re any good – unbeatable as a theatre experience, in my opinion.
The bottom line is simple: “The play has to be about the play in a venue like this.”
But what is it about?
Channeling Seinfeld for a moment, Thomas explains, “We like to say this play is about nothing” –then immediately qualifies the thought: “But it’s really kind of about everything. Friendship, trust, need, hope, despair, faith, loneliness, uncertainty. What human condition is missing?”
Amplifying this thought, Dykstra suggests that it is about no specific time period… and every time period: “I’m willing to wager that if one goes through interviews and reviews about this play over the last 70 years, every one of them will say it feels like the play was written for the time they were presenting it in. That’s what makes it a classic.”
“It has never been more relevant, and the same will be said in 50 years. Because it is about the core of who we are: about uncertainty versus certainty, about awe, about fear, about human rights, about joy, about sorrow, about loss, about love, about time, about life and death, about humour—an endless list, really, of all it means – or can mean – to be human.”
Neither actor wishes to prescribe lessons from their collaboration or specific outcomes for the production. As Dykstra puts it (in rather Beckettian terms), “I hope we honour the play in a way that makes people wonder about so much –but really, I want people to take away from it exactly what each one uniquely takes away from it!”
So Beckett’s text and these paired performances, in this intimate venue, will leave the question of meaning in the hands and hearts of each individual viewer. But behind it lies the tether of constant companionship: in Beckett’s bleak landscape, the endurance of Waiting for Godot lies in two figures who wait together — and in two actors who trust one another to carry that wait.
Waiting for Godot continues until October 5, 2025. Tickets are available at coalminetheatre.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
