Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reunite on stage in Broadway’s ‘Waiting for Godot’

Geoff Bennett:

It's a theater classic that continues to be taken on by top actors and resonates with audiences.

"Waiting for Godot" — yes, that's how it's pronounced — mixes high despair and low comedy to raise big questions about, well, the meaning of life. And now two actors, great friends themselves, are doing their waiting on Broadway.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown gets a look for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Keanu Reeves, Actor:

Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can't tell them to you?

Alex Winter, Actor:

Let them remain private. You know I can't bear that.

Keanu Reeves:

There are times when I wonder if it wouldn't be better for us to part.

Alex Winter:

You wouldn't go far.

Jeffrey Brown:

Two men, Estragon, called Gogo, and Vladimir, or Didi, fearing, laughing, talking, waiting for someone they don't know.

The two men playing them, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. And why are they here?

Keanu Reeves:

Yes, but what did I know? I just had the — I just answered the universe and said you should do "Waiting for Godot" with Alex. And I was like, you're right. OK, I will ask him.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown:

And he said?

Alex Winter:

Absolutely. Yes, but it's a mountain. Let's go climb the mountain.

Jeffrey Brown:

That mountain, "Waiting for Godot," or Godot, as they have chosen to pronounce it in this production, by Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.

Written and first performed in the 1950s, it's still raising deep issues of human existence through a mix of pain and suffering along with broad comedy.

Actor:

Which of you smells so bad?

Keanu Reeves:

He has stinking breath and I have stinking feet.

Actor:

I must go.

Jeffrey Brown:

Keanu Reeves, of course, is a mega-movie star, best known for his roles in "The Matrix" and "John Wick" series. This is his Broadway debut.

Alex Winter, a Broadway and film veteran, is best known in recent years as a director of documentaries, including one on rock star Frank Zappa.

Alex Winter AND Keanu Reeves:

Excellent!

Jeffrey Brown:

The two are forever linked through their roles starting in their 20s in the "Bill and Ted" sci-fi comedy films that began in 1989 about two rather clueless dudes who get their history lessons through time travel.

They have been close friends ever since, the kind who often finish each other's sentences on and off stage. And when we met recently at Broadway's famed Sardi's Restaurant, Reeves, now 61, and Winter, 60, said taking on "Waiting for Godot" together was a must.

Is that because it made it more fun or because it got you past the fear of doing it or…

Keanu Reeves:

For me, it just started with the fun.

(Laughter)

Keanu Reeves:

This seems like a really good idea. Yes.

Alex Winter:

Yes, and also that they're — it is a play about two old friends who are interested in interrogating the questions of life, which is very much the two of us. So…

Jeffrey Brown:

It is?

Alex Winter:

Oh, yes.

Jeffrey Brown:

You mean off stage.

Alex Winter:

Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, like going back to — look, we're goofballs and lead normal lives as well, but, like, I remember certain nights even on "Bill and Ted" one, it would be like 2:00 in the morning. We'd be sitting on the hood of my car in like in a strip mall in Phoenix, like, debating existence.

Keanu Reeves:

Yes.

(Laughter)

Alex Winter:

You know? So, like, in some ways, nothing has changed.

Look at me. Will you look at me?

Keanu Reeves:

What a day.

Alex Winter:

Who beat you? Tell me.

Keanu Reeves:

Another day done with.

Alex Winter:

Not yet.

Keanu Reeves:

For me, it's over and done with no matter what happens.

Jeffrey Brown:

Are Gogo and Didi refugees from war or some environmental catastrophe, figures from outside of time? And who is this Godot?

Alex Winter:

Beckett was cheeky, but he — I think he liked the fact that people debated these things. I think he was cheeky. He would say, oh, it's not God necessarily, but maybe it is. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, come on.

(Laughter)

Alex Winter:

Come on.

Keanu Reeves:

Like, come on. If Samuel was here…

Alex Winter:

Yes.

Keanu Reeves:

I mean, come on.

Alex Winter:

Yes.

Jeffrey Brown:

You would say, come on, God — it is God.

Alex Winter:

Of course God is in Godot, of course, of course, of course.

Steve Martin, Actor:

Moron.

Robin Williams, Actor:

Vermin.

Steve Martin:

Abortion.

(Crosstalk)

Steve Martin:

Sewer-rat. Curate. Cretin.

Robin Williams:

Critic!

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown:

The play has been done by certified funnymen such as Steve Martin and Robin Williams and amid boarded-up flooded homes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

This production led by acclaimed British director Jamie Lloyd takes a stripped-down story and strips it further to a bare large tunnel, or cone, with no props at all. That, says Reeves, forced him to think and act in a new way.

Keanu Reeves:

It's even like the way I talked about the play early days, we can have mud, and why don't we have water, and how about if we do this, and I will come out through the stage.

(Laughter)

Keanu Reeves:

And then Jamie Lloyd and Soutra Gilmour, the production designer, went, here's the set, and all of those ideas like a — like a mandala, just was like — that's — get over that.

Jeffrey Brown:

Yes. Did you find that freeing, though, too to not have the props?

Keanu Reeves:

Oh, it's freeing, but also illuminating. I think that our production is actually illuminating the themes of the play and what it's asking and talking about. To have a literal tree that doesn't look like a tree, you're doing the same thing. You're asking the audience to pretend that it's got lots of leaves, and it's like the spring.

Or then there's a literal tree, and then I'm saying I see nothing. So they almost become more alive.

Alex Winter:

Yes.

Keanu Reeves:

And to the conceit, it's more accurate.

Alex Winter:

It is, yes. Every night, you find something else. We will come off stage even between act one and act two, and he will say or I will say, that — like, oh, wow, right, that.

Jeffrey Brown:

But it's still — you're doing that between acts?

Alex Winter:

Every night. Every night. Every night, there's something. It's just a play of limitless ideas and depth and possibility.

Keanu Reeves:

Do you see anything coming?

Alex Winter:

What?

Keanu Reeves:

Do you see anything coming?

Alex Winter:

No.

Keanu Reeves:

Nor I.

Jeffrey Brown:

Does it feel that way on stage too, where you're saying, oh, I'm with Alex?

Keanu Reeves:

Oh, yes. I get — I mean, so much of the night or the day of the performance, I'm just literally like looking at you…

(Laughter)

Alex Winter:

Yes, we do a fair amount of that.

Keanu Reeves:

… go through your contortions.

(Laughter)

Keanu Reeves:

Poor Vladimir.

Alex Winter:

Poor Vladimir.

Keanu Reeves:

Trying to figure it out.

Alex Winter:

I know, and failing miserably.

Jeffrey Brown:

And how does the play land today, in a time of deep cultural and political divisions? Alex Winter had thought much about that, while Keanu Reeves offered lines from the play.

Alex Winter:

And we're certainly driving into it with the way we're doing, is about looking past those divisions to this sort of human condition as a uniform issue that everyone faces, and this idea that we are all in this struggle together.

Keanu Reeves:

And all mankind is us.

Alex Winter:

Yes, for this moment of time.

Keanu Reeves:

For this moment of time.

Alex Winter:

Whether we like it or not. So let's do something.

Keanu Reeves:

Do something. Let us…

Alex Winter:

I mean, that's a pretty great thing to say right now.

Keanu Reeves:

To help someone.

Alex Winter:

Yes. Yes.

Keanu Reeves:

We help him. We help him.

Alex Winter:

Yes. Yes.

Keanu Reeves:

Let us help him. We help him.

Alex Winter:

Yes.

Keanu Reeves:

Yes. Let's go.

Alex Winter:

Yes.

Jeffrey Brown:

Is it ultimately a hopeless or hopeful play?

Keanu Reeves:

Hopeful.

Alex Winter:

Yes.

Jeffrey Brown:

You're going with hopeful?

Keanu Reeves:

Yes.

Jeffrey Brown:

Yes?

Keanu Reeves:

I mean, they say, let's go. Well, shall we go? Yes, let's go.

Jeffrey Brown:

But then they don't move.

Alex Winter:

But they're together.

Keanu Reeves:

But they still said, let's go.

Alex Winter:

Yes.

Keanu Reeves:

They're still doing it.

Alex Winter:

Yes, they're together. I think that — I think it lands…

Keanu Reeves:

I will fight another day.

Alex Winter:

Yes, they — it lands on this idea that it — that all we may have is each other, but that is enough to continue on. But everything else is up for grabs.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown:

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, Gogo and Didi, are waiting for Godot into early January.

Alex Winter:

Finish a phrase, I tell you.

Keanu Reeves:

Finish your own.

Alex Winter:

Moron.

Keanu Reeves:

That's the idea. Let's abuse each other.

Jeffrey Brown:

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown on Broadway.

Alex Winter:

Moron!

Keanu Reeves:

Vermin!

Alex Winter:

Abortion!

Geoff Bennett:

Online, you can see more from Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, including their mutual love of Dr. Seuss and their favorite plays. That's on our YouTube page.