Mad Cat Theater Company's artistic director, Paul Tei, told the Saturday night Miami audience he'd gotten the idea to mount Waiting for Godot scant weeks before as he watched television coverage of a desperate New Orleans isolated after Hurricane Katrina.
As he spoke, Hurricane Wilma was less than two days from knocking out power to his theater and almost every other place in southeastern Florida. Mad Cat usually produces original work in an office-building shoebox north of downtown, and Tei clearly brought a lot of his own ideas to this production of a mid-century classic. Not all the topical touches pay off.
Tei's turn at Godot has the action taking place in or around New Orleans, though relatively little is made of that: New Orleans jazz and blues plays as the audience settles in, one of the actors wears a shirt with "New Orleans" emblazoned across the front, and Beckett's "country road" is a playing area of wood chips to approximate post-hurricane tree debris. A television sits on the "ground" in one corner, suggesting the displaced household items that line streets after major storms.
Gone is the rise in the road that Beckett calls for in his mix of Christian symbolism, clowning and riffs on duty and friendship. But Tei and his players use Beckett's own reportedly preferred pronunciation -- GOD-oh -- and when the forever-waiting Didi and Gogo stretch out their arms in expectation of a hug, it's easy to recall images of Christ on the cross.
Joe Kimble is an animated Vladimir, Michael Vines a subdued Estragon and Erik Fabregat a blowhard of a Pozzo wearing turquoise Converse sneakers and that "New Orleans" shirt. But having the players do longish takes -- or at least takes that seem long -- doesn't translate into laughs. And Scott Genn as Lucky evokes Muhammad Ali, Howard Cosell and other pop icons, but generates no great response.
With power restored to Mad Cat's theater and most of the rest of South Florida, performances resumed for an extended run.
