"There is no customary tree as part of the scenery, for one thing, and no country road. This Didi and Gogo while away their endless days inside a kind of tapering tunnel..."

"... that has an enormous gaping mouth at the downstage end, where they perch on its lip, nice and close to the orchestra seats. Visually striking spareness is a hallmark of [director Jamie] Lloyd’s work.... What’s curious in 'Waiting for Godot' is that the textual distillation we have come to expect from Lloyd is largely missing.... [H]e doesn’t seem to have anything to say. That’s disappointing on its own, because the play needs strong directorial focus to land with any force, but particularly so at a time when surely a good chunk of the populace could identify with Didi and Gogo’s sense of exhaustion, futility and despair in the face of a relentlessly brutal world.... This Didi and Gogo speak the words, but without the weight and meaning of the thoughts they have thought countless times before...."

Writes NYT theater critic Laura Collins-Hughes, in "'Waiting for Godot' Review: Cue the Air Guitar/Jamie Lloyd’s pristinely chic Broadway revival of the existential tragicomedy casts the 'Bill & Ted' stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as Samuel Beckett’s clowns" (NYT).

The idea here was to have Bill and Ted play the Didi and Gogo in "Waiting for Godot," and won't fans pack the theater to see that? Isn't that how things are done on Broadway these days? I have a sense of exhaustion, futility and despair in the face of that relentlessly brutal world.

Anyway, here's the painting — "Two Men Contemplating the Moon" — that Beckett said inspired him to write the play:

Is it hard to accept a tunnel instead of a tree and the the moon? A tunnel is sort of like a moonscape, what with the light at the end of it — moonish, no?

Here's that photo I took last March that made me think of a "Godot" set:

And here's one Meade sent me from Presque Isle 2 months later:

The tree is important!