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Let’s go. We can’t. Why not? ... We’re still waiting to perform Godot in a public loo
Ellen Widdup23.07.09
When Harry Michell was refused permission to stage Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot in a public lavatory by the playwright's estate he wanted revenge.
Beckett's classic follows Vladimir and Estragon as they wait for the non-appearing Godot and exchange terse conversation on the meaning of life and death. But in Harry's play, Still Waiting For Godot, two characters wait to see a play cancelled by a “neurotic” man who tries to prevent anyone saying words Beckett used in the original.
Harry, a pupil of City of London School, had the idea of staging it in a public loo after starring in a school production of Godot in the lavatories and finding they worked well as a backdrop. “The Beckett estate thought I was trying to undermine the play in some way, but that was not my intention,” he said. “I think it is something Beckett would have gone for. It is slightly absurd but lends itself nicely to the work because you are in a tight space, adding to the pressure of the plot.
“It's part homage and part making a mockery of the way we have been treated.” Harry, the son of Roger Michell, director of films such as Notting Hill, said: “Edinburgh Fringe loved the concept and signed us up straight away.”
The run by his theatre group, Nod Nod, starts on 25 August and runs for six days. The venue, a loo in Edinburgh's St James shopping centre, holds an audience of 15 for the 50-minute show.
Beckett's estate has handled performance rights since the playwright's death in 1989. Of Harry's play, it said: “Productions must follow guidelines on where the play is set. A lavatory block is not a proper set.”
