NEW YORK (AP) — Thirty-six years after he teamed up with Keanu Reeves to play a pair of well-intentioned dimwits on the massive display, Alex Winter finds himself beside the identical man on Broadway taking part in one other set of candy, low-bulbed guys.
The 2 actors have had totally different trajectories within the years since they kicked off the “Bill & Ted” film franchise — together with Winter turning into a talented indie director — however have remained shut and are reteaming for the existential stage masterpiece “Waiting for Godot.”
“That similarity is not lost on any of us,” says Winter. “We are inescapably Bill and Ted. So there’s going to be an aspect of that in there because it’s who we are.”
Playwright Samuel Beckett’s work is 2 acts of suave anticipation, a play crammed with vaudevillian excessive jinks that masks more and more agitated desperation. Two tramps, named Estragon and Vladimir, are awaiting the arrival of the mysterious title character. However will he ever present up?
Basic components and pairs
A number of the greatest stars have teamed as much as play Estragon and Vladimir, together with Sam Waterston and Austin Pendleton, Geoffrey Rush and Mel Gibson, Robin Williams and Steve Martin, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, Nathan Lane and Invoice Irwin, and Ethan Hawke and John Leguizamo.
Estragon is hysterically dense and bit extra combative than Vladimir, who’s extra of a hand-wringer, contemplative, extra sweet-tempered. They amuse one another. They debate whether or not or to not dangle themselves. They eat turnips.
When Reeves got here up with the concept of reuniting with Winter for the play, neither actor knew which half was proper for them. They met in a lodge room for a number of days in New York, studying the play with director Jamie Lloyd.
Someday, Reeves performed Estragon; the subsequent day they swapped. “By the third day, it was clear who was who. It just seemed clear to all of us, including Jamie,” says Winter, who landed on Vladimir. “I think it’s right temperamentally.”
Through the years, there have been some ways to seize the tone of “Waiting for Godot,” with a preferred method leaning into the vaudeville, making the 2 tramps into kind of Laurel and Hardy sorts.
Winter and Reeves weren’t drawn to that, as an alternative impressed by Beckett’s actual life. “Keanu and I were very interested in playing these characters in a grounded way, meaning not letting the absurdism overtake the humanity.”
Winter factors out that Beckett labored for the French Resistance throughout World Conflict II, and he and his soon-to-be-wife needed to flee for his or her lives into rural France when the Nazis found their cell.
“Vladimir and Estragon are basically Samuel Beckett and his wife on the run,” he says. “They spent a year in the French countryside living in ditches and eating root vegetables and dreaming of sleeping in a loft in a barn with hay.”
Director of ‘Adulthood’
Winter simply coincidentally has a brand new film this fall on the identical time he returns to Broadway, “Adulthood,” a darkish comedy he directed starring Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario.
It is a couple of pair of siblings who uncover a physique bricked up of their mom’s house and should scramble to not let this revelation destroy their household. Beneath the comedy, it explores generational sins and trendy household stress.
Winter was impressed by Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” and Luis Buñuel’s “Los Olvidados.” “It has kind of a very serious subtext with a much lighter, more farcical surface,” he says. That kind of completely describes “Waiting for Godot” and the “Bill and Ted” motion pictures, too.
Winter and Reeves first met as 20-somethings within the late ’80s doing “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” Reeves turned the blockbuster motion star of franchises like “The Matrix” and “John Wick,” whereas Winter turned an actor, director and documentarian of such motion pictures as “Zappa.”
Winter and Reeves turned shut buddies throughout the audition course of for “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” as a result of they’d related tastes in literature and theater. They each grew up on the East coast with inventive, cultured mother and father they usually shared a love of taking part in bass, bikes, Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard.
Winter was skilled in various kinds of bodily motion and beloved the wedding of physicality and language in “Bill and Ted.” “Beckett is obviously the granddaddy of the combination of the physical and the verbal,” he says.
And beneath the humorous traces — “Be excellent to each other” and “Party on, dudes!” — had been deep concepts about existentialism, demise and future, like within the second film when the 2 dudes problem Loss of life to play board video games.
“’Godot’ is not dissimilar in that way, where it toggles between a sort of levity and like deep, deep dread,” he says. “We’re getting to push all of those things obviously substantially farther with this.”
Lloyd, the director, says there are similarities between “Bill and Ted” and Beckett and the 2 actors have simply made the transition, primarily based on their 40-year friendship.
“I was struck immediately by how effortless they could be with the comedic rhythm and that they didn’t have to strain to make it funny, or strain to make it witty, because their chemistry is so instant,” he says. “It comes easy to them.”
Winter very aware of Broadway
This can be Reeves’ Broadway debut, however Winter is a veteran. From age 13 to 18, he was first in “King and I” with Yul Brynner after which in “Peter Pan” with Sandy Duncan.
“It’s kind of like ‘Godot,’ like I feel like time has bent,” says Winter. “It’s not like a nostalgia trip. I literally just feel like I’m right backstage again. It’s so weird.”
Reeves at one level recommended they swap every night time taking part in Estragon and Vladimir, however Winter set him straight. He knew how exhausting that could possibly be.
“I’d been on Broadway all through my high school years, literally for years doing two shows back to back, eight shows a week. And I knew that it would be an intense schedule and that would probably be too rigorous to try to do.”
He referred to as “Waiting for Godot” just like the theatrical equal of climbing Mount Everest. Switching roles can be like “stacking Everest on top of Everest.”
