Review: Aloof production of Waiting for Godot marks significant moment for Toronto’s Soulpepper

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Is Godot dead? I was left asking the question after watching director Daniel Brooks's new production of the once ground-breaking play at Soulpepper with a reverent opening-night audience.

The stories of how Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy – in which, as the Irish critic Vivian Mercier observed, "nothing happens, twice" – was first greeted by a lively stream of bafflement and irritation in its English-language premiere in 1955, were back in circulation in the news this month.

Peter Hall, who helmed that production at the age of 24 and then went on to run many of England's biggest theatre companies, died earlier this month – and his obituaries had all rehashed the story of the controversial show that first thrust him to prominence.

And, coincidentally, the same day Hall died, the British Library released newly digitized material about Godot – so now anyone around the world can go read the disgusted description of Beckett's play by an examiner with the Lord Chamberlain's Office, then the official censor of British theatre, as an "ugly little jet of marsh-gas" and "two hours of angry boredom."

It's hard for any play to live up to such a massive reputation for disruption – audiences now know what they're not going to get from Waiting for Godot. And yet, with the history fresh in mind, I nevertheless found myself wishing I could get roused one way or another by Brooks's aloof production of it.

Waiting for Godot's setting is, famously, described in Beckett's text with just five words: "A country road. A tree." This is where a pair of tramps named Vladimir and Estragon find various ways to pass the time as they wait for a mysterious man named Godot – interrupted only by a sadistic landowner named Pozzo and a servant he keeps on a leash named Lucky.

For Soulpepper's production, designer Lorenzo Savioni has departed from that description. He's taken the tramps Vladimir (Diego Matamoros) and Estragon (Oliver Dennis) and placed them instead in a waiting room – one with artfully discoloured concrete walls, a floor made of loose wooden planks and an open doorway at each end. It's a striking set, quite beautiful in its own way, but turns an agoraphobic play into a claustrophobic one – and feels a bit like a metaphor plunked on top of a metaphor.

Waiting for Godot has proved remarkably adaptable to real-world settings where its themes resonate – whether post-Katrina New Orleans, or apartheid South Africa. But Brooks and his designer seem eager not to reference the real world, keeping things abstract and coolly alluding to other works by Beckett in the scenography – the bunker feel making one think of Endgame; the curtain slowly opening and closing reminds of the Irish playwright's short works such as Breath.

Every time I find myself at a Waiting for Godot, I end up spending a lot of time thinking about the set – most likely because that's one of the few areas where the Beckett estate allows for much true creativity from a production. The text itself has been mined to death by critics for its Christian allegorical elements or its existential philosophy to the point where, for me anyway, the play's meanings seem less mysterious than belaboured.

There are, of course, the performances to observe – and there are flashes of freshness in the ones at Soulpepper, even if the two leads seem slightly at odds stylistically. Dennis is quite contemporary in the way he expresses Estragon's frustrations and agonies – and has, as always, excellent comic timing. Matamoros's Vladimir feels more like a performance of a tramp – indeed, he even seems to be channelling Tom Waits when he briefly breaks into song.

As Pozzo, Rick Roberts reaches higher in a performance that flirts with the unhinged and reminds you that this is the play that, as Hall wrote on its 50th anniversary, "gave the theatre back its metaphorical power." He can really make you sit up in your seat with his capriciousness – and makes you feel as if something might happen, which is exciting especially in this context. (As Lucky, Alex McCooeye does a fine job of appearing so horribly mistreated that I constantly wanted to avert my eyes from him.)

It occurred to me after the show that Waiting for Godot marks a significant moment for Soulpepper's most dedicated audience. This is the first time the Toronto theatre company founded in 1998 has produced a play for a second time – not remounted or revised an earlier production, but assigned a new designer and director and cast to take on a script they've already produced in the same form. (Artistic director Albert Schultz first directed the show with William Hutt in 2004 shortly before the great actor died.)

How appropriate that Soulpepper should choose this stuck-in-a-loop play for that honour – although it's a choice that casts a half-cheeky, half-bleak light (Beckettian, you might say) on the practice of theatre in general.