Writer Gary Wilmot
Director: Sydney Stevenson
Gary Wilmot has been a presence on theatre stages and television screens for decades, an acknowledged master of comic timing and delivery, a song-and-dance showman with a twinkle in his eye. While We Were Waiting marks his debut as a playwright, revealing a very different theatrical style from that with which he is usually associated.
Wilmot and Steve Furst star as two men waiting outside a big yellow door situated in an isolated landscape. As they wait, they ponder the intricacies and minutiae of language, their attitude to the world, and to the nature of time. Furst’s Mulberry views waiting as a hobby, a pastime one can enjoy without any special equipment or training, and yet grows more anxious as he waits. Wilmot’s Bix, his crumpled linen jacket a sharp contrast to Mulberry’s suited fussiness, is the more relaxed and carefree of the two.
In the play’s 90 minutes, Wilmot throws in plenty of comic asides and pithy observations. There are places where that content feels piecemeal and fragmentary, as if Wilmot has accumulated a lifetime’s worth of wryly comic observations, many of which have been noted elsewhere before, and attempted to string them together.
And if that were all While They Were Waiting was, it would still be an entertaining evening. But Wilmot reaches further, into an absurdist realm that invites and welcomes comparison to Beckett. There is a philosophical yearning throughout that glues all the comedic notes together. It may not be quite as deep as it would like to imagine, but it is nonetheless an enthralling concoction.
Hannah Danson’s set centres, of course, around the imposing, unopened bright yellow door. But there are lovely touches dotted around the space, too, and the beautiful clouds suspended from the ceiling give the impression of stepping into the frame of a Wes Anderson movie.
Such a design works better because it complements and enhances the performances. Furst and Wilmot are supremely comfortable with each other as actors (Wilmot started writing the play when they were sharing a dressing room at the National Theatre), and that makes the characters’ differing attitudes feel all the more believable. Whether it’s Mulberry’s pedantic spikiness or the more happy-go-lucky air that Bix conveys, one really feels as if these are characters that Wilmot, as both playwright and actor, knows inside out.
Wilmot does decide to give his characters a sense of resolution, which feels less Beckettian than the rest of his play. But what could become an overly saccharine conclusion is tempered by a delicious fake-out. A work that at times plays with the concept of what a play is and how its characters should feel about being on stage is the perfect place to fold the performers taking their bows into the play itself.
While They Were Waiting wears its influences on its sleeve just as eagerly as it does its heart. This is a show that is both light-hearted and deep, serious yet silly. One would be very surprised if this is the last we hear of Gary Wilmot’s playwriting career, or indeed of this piece.
Runs until 22 March 2026
