Matthew Kelly on Waiting For Godot: ‘The more I read it, the more I think it’s a joyful thing’
Longtime friends George Costigan and Matthew Kelly are the latest duo to tackle the theatrical holy grail of Waiting For Godot. The pair talk to Neil Cooper about their drama school days, working together over the years and why they believe Godot is about all of us
It was George Costigan’s idea that he and Matthew Kelly should do Waiting For Godot together. The pair star as Vladimir and Estragon, the two men anticipating the title character who never comes in Samuel Beckett’s play that revolutionised 20th-century drama. Watching these two very different veterans of stage and screen spark off each other, as they riff on this piece of existential vaudeville in which ‘nothing happens twice’, you can see why it was such an inspired notion.
‘This is a play about love,’ says Kelly of Beckett’s iconic work, in which the everyday chemistry between lifelong friends is laid bare in all its mundane glory. ‘We’ve known each other for 58 years and I think Vladimir and Estragon have known each other for that long, so it’s kind of an ideal time for us to do it. And we might get it right this time.’
Dominic Hill’s new production, which opens at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre prior to dates in Liverpool and Bolton, will be the fourth time Kelly has done the play, with previous stints in 1972, 1986 and 2012. Costigan has only performed it once before, at Manchester’s Library Theatre in 2008. It was a production that left its mark. ‘There was a Saturday matinee where the audience laughed their faces off,’ Costigan remembers. ‘We were following them and finding stuff, because they were in such a state; it took us to a place where we went “is there a gag down there as well?” Come the evening show, we couldn’t wait to get out there, but when we did, zilch. But at the end, they clapped their hands off. They had the most fantastic evening. Just a very different evening to the audience at the matinee. I’ve never been in a play that can do that, so I’m very, very, very, very happy to be doing it again.’
Costigan and Kelly met on their first day studying drama in Manchester more than half a century ago. ‘We get to college and meet everybody,’ Costigan recalls. ‘And there’s this tall bloke, and he’s quite funny and all that. Then you get to the middle of November in first year, he’s not there. Where is he? What’s happened? He’s only off doing panto with Hylda Baker.’ Both men went on to work at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre during its 1970s heyday. ‘George was there first,’ Kelly remembers. ‘And then, because his company went down to the West End with Willy Russell’s play John, Paul, George, Ringo... & Bert, it created a vacuum and they needed actors really quickly. So while they were all living it up, I was in the company which a year later went into the West End with Funny Peculiar, and then we all went our separate ways.’
Costigan and Kelly’s work together since then includes playing Lennie and George in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, and in Don Quixote, with Costigan playing Sancho Panza to Kelly’s Don Quixote. ‘The relationship that George and I had with Lennie and George is not dissimilar to Vladimir and Estragon,’ Kelly points out. ‘I think it’s how men and women are with each other, trying to pass the time, trying to find ways of letting yourself know that you exist. It’s a humanity play. The more I read it, the more I think it’s a joyful thing, even though it’s heartbreaking.’
Both men acknowledge their differences as actors. ‘The great thing about George is that he’s incredibly honest, he can’t help but tell the truth,’ says Kelly. ‘Which is sometimes unfortunate,’ Costigan chips in. ‘George is much more inventive than I am, so you have to keep up,’ adds Kelly. ‘I get bored easy,’ is Costigan’s excuse.
‘The biggest question about Waiting For Godot is why are people still doing it? And it’s because in terms of human life, it’s timeless,’ says Costigan. ‘It’s no surprise that he’s got a young boy, a big fascist bully and a working-class slave. And then there are these two bums. One of them is a philosopher, the other one is instinctively bright. He’s covered humanity. This is a play about all of us.’
Waiting For Godot, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 20 February–Saturday 14 March; Everyman, Liverpool, Tuesday 17 March–Saturday 4 April; Octagon, Bolton, Wednesday 15 April–Saturday 2 May.