The Stratford Festival Review: Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman reveal how connection can make or break even the greatest classics.
By Ross
Few experiences during Stratford’s opening week fascinated me more than watching Tom McCamus lead two of the most celebrated plays of the twentieth century within days of one another. On paper, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman seem worlds apart. Godot unfolds in an abstract landscape where two men wait endlessly for someone who never arrives, while Salesman examines the collapse of an aging man living in a dream that has already slipped beyond his reach and let him down. Yet both plays are deeply concerned with the same question: how human beings connect to one another while struggling to understand themselves. After seeing both productions, it became clear that the answer to that question shaped the success of each evening in dramatically different ways.
Molly Atkinson’s production of Waiting for Godot grows up from the Festival Theatre‘s grand stage with remarkable confidence and clarity. Beckett’s famous opening line, “Nothing to be done,” hangs over the entire production, yet Atkinson (StratFest’s Hedda Gabler) finds surprising warmth inside that apparent hopelessness. Set and costume designer Cory Sincennes (ShawFest’s Anything Goes), with lighting by Jareth Li (StratFest’s Sense and Sensibility) and sound design by composer Alessandro Juliani (ShawFest’s On the Razzle), creates a stark landscape centred around a solitary tree emerging from the wooden stage floor, a barren environment that feels simultaneously immense yet somehow, surprisingly intimate. It is a world stripped down to essentials, forcing attention onto the people inhabiting it, and those lost souls do that framework justice.
Emerging from the morning shadows, Paul Gross (StratFest’s King Lear; “Slings & Arrows“) as Vladimir and McCamus (StratFest’s Salesman in China) embodying Estragon, find connection in complex contradictions. They are two weary travellers who spend their days waiting for the mysterious Godot, repeatedly circling the same conversations by leaving questions unanswered, jokes unfinished, and routines unrewarded. Time seems suspended for this pair, and the meaning of it all remains elusive. Yet what continually grounds the production is the organic connection these two men have, mainly because, even when they appear not to, they do in fact listen to one another.
That may sound like a simple observation, but it becomes the production’s greatest strength. Gross and McCamus transform Beckett’s circular dialogue into something deeply authentic and human. Estragon longs to be noticed and remembered. Vladimir seeks reassurance and companionship. They argue, reconcile, embrace, and forgive. When Vladimir reaches out with an invitation to hug his friend, the gesture carries genuine emotional weight embedded with tender need. Even their silences feel shared. Their relationship becomes the emotional anchor that allows Beckett’s philosophical questions to resonate.
Jonathan Goad‘s commanding Pozzo and David W. Keeley‘s extraordinary Lucky provide a different kind of companionship. Their interactions pulse with dependence, cruelty, and absolute blind absurdity. Lucky’s famous torrent of language arrives as an astonishing eruption of sound and thought, simultaneously suggesting profound meaning and complete meaninglessness. Their circular way of speaking, all four of them at some point or another, is spectacularly well delivered, giving what feels like clarity that ultimately doesn’t make sense to ideas and thoughts that sprout out of nothingness. Words seem to emerge from curiosity, boredom, habit, and desperation all at once, but all find emotional relevance in the way they are handled with such care.
As day turns to night, and the moon appears clear and steady in an instant, like a switch is flipped from day to night, repetition is abundant, but also key. The repeated appearance of the Boy, played on opening night by Asher Albert Waxman, reinforces the endless cycle at the heart of the play. Godot will not arrive today. He will surely come tomorrow. The message never changes, and yet Vladimir and Estragon continue waiting. Even as the tree sprouts leaves between acts, certainty remains beyond reach.
The production’s strength lies in making that uncertainty feel deeply personal. Even when the tree sprouts some leaves during the interval, the abstract reality of this play lingers. “What are we doing here?” Estragon continually asks his Vladimir, hoping for a different answer, but never getting one that satisfies. Beckett’s questions are enormous. What are we doing here? Why do we continue? How do we endure the passage of time? Atkinson never forces answers onto the audience. Instead, she focuses on the fragile human connections that make the waiting bearable. The result is a production filled with humour, tenderness, and surprising emotional depth.
Just a few Stratford blocks away at the Avon Theatre, Death of a Salesman tackles many of the same concerns through a very different lens. Arthur Miller’s classic examines ambition, failure, memory, and family through the unraveling life of Willy Loman. Directed by Dean Gabourie (StratFest’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?), the Stratford production features a committed and often compelling cast, with a commanding central performance from McCamus, who captures Willy’s exhaustion from his first appearance.
A trumpet is playing “Blue Skies” (Michael Louis Johnson) to draw us in, yet in that invitation, we feel the disconnect. The tune carries a buoyancy and optimism that sit oddly beside the exhaustion in Willy Loman’s bones. It’s a surprising choice to carry this music throughout the evening, instilling a tension between the production’s emotional reality and its tonal framing that never fully resolves, and it creates a distance that proves difficult to overcome. Still, the initial image of Willy is striking. Carrying suitcases and burdened by years of disappointment, Willy seems worn down by the weight of his own expectations. Those sample cases feel as though they weigh a thousand pounds each, as McCamus (StratFest’s Macbeth) shuffles in his character’s vulnerability, confusion, and desperation. We can’t help but feel the nervous physical rhythm inside as he constantly removes and replaces his suit jacket. The action delivers a strong window into his crushed soul, revealing a man struggling to hold himself together.
The always dependable Lucy Peacock (StratFest’s Three Tall Women) brings tenderness and nervous devotion to her Linda Loman. It feels lived-in and honest, although the way she is forced to move about the stage feels off-putting and awkward. Joe Perry‘s Biff captures the deep frustration of a son desperately trying to both impress and escape the myths his father built around him. Josh Johnston‘s Happy effectively embodies the seductive pull of Willy’s dream of popularity and success, but the pull for validation never fully resonates. Hap is a smooth-talking liar, much like his father, still chasing an illusion that serves neither himself nor his brother. But he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. Individually, many of the performances work. The difficulty is that the family never fully feels like a family.
Designed by Scott Penner (Broadway’s Job), with lighting by Louise Guinand (StratFest’s Casey and Diana), the production creates an environment that paradoxically keeps emotional intimacy at a distance. The movement between memory and reality lacks clear definition, and the family often appears to occupy separate emotional worlds rather than colliding within the same crisis. During intermission, I overheard one audience member suggest that the production might have resonated more strongly in the Studio Theatre, where Gabourie previously directed the superb The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? Whether true or not, the comment stayed with me because it spoke directly to the challenge facing this staging. Despite the strength of the performances, intimacy continually feels just out of reach.
That visual of those windows looking down on the family doesn’t quite achieve what it seems intended to accomplish. They never feel crowded in or trapped, nor do we get the sense that neighbours are watching as Willy shouts into the night. Surprisingly, the design makes the house feel less intimate rather than more, so that confrontations which should explode feel oddly restrained and detached.
There are undeniable flashes of the play’s power. Biff’s “screw the business world” rejection finally exposes the burden of the dreams imposed upon him, while Linda’s plea that “attention must be paid” briefly re-focuses the family’s emotional energy inward in a way that sent shivers down my spine. For a moment, the family seems poised to confront the wounds that have shaped them. But it’s Matthew Kabwe (StratFest’s Love’s Labour’s Lost) and his portrayal of Charley that provide some of the evening’s strongest emotional grounding. “He doesn’t have to mention it; he’s going to do it,” says Charlie about his son, and in that moment, he demonstrates a clearer comprehension of how to father a son; more so, it shows us he understands Willy better than Willy understands himself, and it lands with devastating force because it cuts through illusion and reaches the painful truth underneath. Yet those moments never quite accumulate into the devastating emotional force the play requires. Instead, scenes often release their tension just as they seem poised to explode.
That contrast between the two productions became increasingly fascinating as the week unfolded. In Death of a Salesman, McCamus portrays a man desperate to be seen, understood, and valued by those closest to him, yet the surrounding relationships never fully connect. In Waiting for Godot, McCamus inhabits a character equally lost and uncertain, but one sustained by a relationship that continually renews itself through listening, forgiveness, and companionship.
Both plays ask profound questions about human existence. Both examine people confronting uncertainty, disappointment, and the passage of time. Both feature remarkable work from several of Canada’s finest actors. Yet one production continually draws its audience back into the emotional depths of its characters, while the other keeps those emotions frustratingly just out of familial reach.
At the end of Stratford’s opening week, the image of Vladimir and Estragon standing together beneath that lonely tree stayed close and true to my heart. They may not know why they are waiting. They may never receive the answers they seek. Yet they continue sharing the burden of that uncertainty with one another. For all of Beckett’s existential questions and Miller’s tragic warnings, that simple act of connection proved to be the most powerful thing I witnessed in either play and on either stage.
