Writer: Shomit Dutta
Directors: Báirbre Ní Chaoimh
This engaging two hander about an imaginary series of conversations between Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, both acclaimed playwrights and lovers of cricket, could well have been titled, Waiting for Doggo. The waiting motif which informs a large part of the theme is a cricket term as well as a play on Beckett’s Godot, and all the interactions are underscored by the act of waiting. This includes waiting for a train that never arrives and for a lift home by someone with the moniker Doggo, who never comes.
The plot encompasses an encounter at a cricket pavilion in 1964 between two theatrical masterminds, Beckett and Pinter. The two men first met in the 1950’s in that great literary bastion, the city of Paris. There followed a long and mutually respectful friendship with a shared passion for both drama and cricket. Pinter greatly admired Sam, even calling him, ‘the greatest writer of our time,’ though he also appeared to have occasionally felt in Beckett’s shadow. For example, he hated it when he was sometimes referred to as ‘the poor man’s Samuel Beckett’.
As the play opens the two characters are dressed in cricket gear and about to take part in a match. It is a gloriously sunny day deep in the Cotswolds and both men are seated outside. Martin Cahill’s set design is simple – largely consisting of two wooden fold-up chairs on a mound of grass – and perfectly captures the scene, focussing our attention on the actors.
Beckett (Barry McGovern) is padded up and waiting to bat, while also writing in the scorebook and changing the scores on the nearby scoreboard. His companion, Pinter (Michael James Ford) however, is not padded up. Nursing one foot, he winces in pain lamenting about his swollen ankle which of course ignites an Oedipal analogy. In fact, the play abounds in both cricket terminology and homages to the great classical works.
As two veteran thespians, McGovern and Ford are ideally cast for these roles. On stage they have a unique rapport and a sparkling stage presence which keeps the audience enthralled throughout the almost hour’s duration. Direction by Báirbre Ní Chaoimh was seamless.
McGovern’s Beckett is an arresting take on the great dramatist. As a long-standing Beckettian actor, he emulates perfectly the essence of Beckett, understated and self-sure, an erudite mix of irascible wit and self-deprecating humour. In contrast, Ford’s Pinter is brash, though his outward ‘smart-Alec’ manner, may be a cover for an inner diffidence.
At its heart, the play’s spirit centres on its allusions to Pinter’s The Dumbwaiter and Becket’s magnum opus, Waiting for Godot. The setting, which is near Adlestrop, also references the Edwardian English poet Edward Thomas and his poem about the train journey he took in 1914.
The writer Shomit Dutta, a translator and classical scholar, has a love of both Nobel prize winning dramatists as well as being a cricket enthusiast. This is an intelligent, scintillating piece of theatre brilliantly achieving Dutta’s aim that his play be a ‘comic caprice, a shared dream’.
The clever language of the dialogue, rich in literary and classical references and analogies, positively sizzles with humour, wit, and razor sharpness. In the opening scene Pinter seems to push Beckett’s buttons and as the conversation develops the biting banter between both playwrights’ dips and dives with riveting innuendo. There is a bristling and often wittily funny undercurrent of seething edginess underlying the playwrights’ conversations as each seems to provoke and irritate the other. As the interaction continues this becomes less sardonic and vitriolic until by the end there is something of a bond between them.
On a final note, one does not have to be a cricket aficionado to enjoy this drama. This reviewer, who has not even a passing knowledge of the sport, was entirely engaged. Highly entertaining and funny, don’t miss this captivating work about two of the greatest playwrights in the English language!
Runs Until 19th July 2025.
