Matthew Kelly on tackling Waiting for Godot with George Costigan: 'it could hardly be more right for us'
Matthew Kelly and George Costigan have been friends for more than half a century, so when an opportunity arose for them to play Vladimir and Estragon together they jumped at the chance, writes Joyce McMillan
It was 58 years ago, in 1968, that the young Matthew Kelly first met the young George Costigan, at the theatre school in what was about to become Manchester Polytechnic. Both were studying to be actors, and Costigan was a couple of years older; but they soon became firm friends, and as two proud Manchester lads in what is still a London-dominated theatre world - “we were very against all things RADA”, says Kelly - they have remained friends ever since, working together whenever their long and varied careers allowed.
Both started their careers at the legendary and intensely radical Liverpool Everyman Theatre of the early 1970s, with Kelly even joining the Workers’ Revolutionary Party for a while, although he eventually found fame, in the 1980s, as a light entertainment television presenter, hosting shows including Game For A Laugh and Stars In Their Eyes. Costigan became a well-known screen and television actor, playing businessman Bob in the 1986 cult hit Rita, Sue And Bob Too, and appearing as a familiar face in almost every major UK crime series of the last 40 years, as well as in the film versions of Shirley Valentine and Calendar Girls, and in series from Emmerdale to Holby City.
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Both, though, continued to work in theatre, as something of a first love; and when Costigan, now 78, decided it was time for a final go at Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot - a play both actors have tussled with in different productions and roles, over the years - he immediately turned to Kelly as his stage partner, in tackling Beckett’s famous two-act meditation for two old tramps called Vladimir and Estragon, waiting in a barren landscape for a Mr Godot who never comes. The result is the new Citizens’ Theatre production of Waiting For Godot, set to open in Glasgow on 20 February, before touring on to its co-producing theatres, the Liverpool Everyman, and the Octagon in Bolton.
“It’s a play about two old men who have known each other for 50 years,” says Kelly, during a break from rehearsals, “so it could hardly be more right for us, now that we’re both of a certain age. George played Estragon in Manchester in 2008, and wanted to try playing Vladimir; I had actually played Vladimir at Oxford Playhouse in the 1980s, although I was really far too young then.
“And strangely, when we started rehearsals here at the Citizens’, I discovered that the director, Dominic Hill, actually saw that production as a teenager. So there are plenty of deep connections here, and it’s wonderful to be working on it together at the Citizens.”
Working with Hill again was a high priority for Costigan, who has previously appeared in Hill’s acclaimed Citizens’ productions of Crime And Punishment, This Restless House, and A Long Day’s Journey Into Night; and Hill is quietly delighted to be directing Waiting For Godot for the first time, with this remarkable pair of actors, at this stage in their careers.
“I remember being really struck by that production in Oxford all those years ago,” says Hill, “struck by the play, and thinking that Matthew Kelly - this young guy off the telly - was really very good in it.
“I do think, though, that this is very deeply a play about old age. Vladimir has terrible prostate problems and has to pee every five minutes, Estragon can hardly walk. And I think the play is about the love between them, even though they often annoy one another - love, and kindness, and the way they look after each other, despite everything. This is Beckett’s first play, written in 1949, and in some ways I think he improved as he went on; the later plays are more precise, more focussed.
“What’s really striking in Waiting For Godot, though, is how he can already take a poetic image and make it into a tremendously powerful stage image - like Pozzo, the rich man, who arrives with his exhausted servant Lucky on the end of a rope. You don’t get an image much more theatrical than that. There’s a huge sense of the world’s cruelty in this play, and it’s not difficult to find resonances with our world today. So I’m trying not to do the play as a 1950s period piece, with the bowler hats and so on. There’s no drastic updating; but we are playing it as something that’s happening in the here and now.”
Kelly shares that sense of the play’s continuing relevance. “Like so many people right now,” he says, “Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for better times that never come. They’re in poor health, and they constantly forget things - there’s certainly a touch of dementia there.
“And yet they still try to keep each other going - they joke and banter and share their problems, and even sing the odd song; the play is often very funny, full of comedy. Our production has a slightly theatrical setting, and that’s as it should be, because storytelling and performing is one of the ways we humans survive, in impossible times. I’ve loved theatre ever since I was first taken to see a pantomime, aged about five; I thought it was warm and golden and wonderful, and I knew it was what I wanted to do, for the rest of my life.
“Even today, I don’t think about retiring. I love rehearsing and performing, I love working with a great director like Dominic, I love the company of actors. So I will carry on acting for as long as I can. And I couldn’t be more pleased that this show will take us to Glasgow, and Bolton, and to the Liverpool Everyman - one of the places where it all began for me and George, so many years ago.”
Waiting for Godot is at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, from 20 February until 14 March. This feature was produced in association with the Citizens’ Theatre.
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