Writer: Leo Simpe-Asante
Directors: Leo Simpe-Asante and Jay Kavanaugh
Young writer and student Leo Simpe-Asante’s clever and confident slice of absurdist comedy, Godot’s To-Do List, won the inaugural Royal Court Young Playwrights Award 2025 in the age 16 to 18 category. It is easy to see why. The piece features a black-suited, bowler-hatted Godot trapped in a mysterious room, unable to escape.
“I’m late to meet my friends”, Godot (Simpe-Asante performs as well as writes) insists to the god-like, enigmatic, unseen voice (an excellent Milly Thorpe live streams a voiceover from off stage). The only way out is to complete a random, absurd, and seemingly unending to-do list of actions dictated by the increasingly unhinged voice, which may well be inside Godot’s head.
Some tasks, like breathing, talking, or apologising, are easy. “Call your mum” is tough without a phone, but it gives Simpe-Asante a chance to demonstrate some nifty mime and physical theatre. “Write a limerick” invites the draft first line: “There once was a man named Sam Beckett”. A delayed response to the instruction “Have an existential crisis” invites a petulant “What are you waiting for, Godot?” from the irritated voice. The demand “Kill yourself” is thankfully swiftly followed by “Only joking”. Equally thankfully, an apparent instruction to orgasm results from a rapidly resolved communication breakdown.
One suspects the setup would struggle as a game show, but Simpe-Asante’s bewitched, bothered, and bewildered turn as Godot, desperate to find meaning in a meaningless world, is an utter delight. In Waiting for Godot, the man does not turn up because he is never meant to. Waiting itself is the point. In Godot’s To-Do List, life is just a long list of brain-numbing tasks with no apparent meaning or purpose. Completing them is the point, and if that is all life amounts to, “why keep doing it?” Godot indeed completes the task of ‘having an existential crisis’ in this witty, likeable 50 minutes.
Runs until 18 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
