Waiting for Godot review: Ben Whishaw brings Paddington-esque wistfulness to Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy

A brooding cloud of torpor hangs thickly above Samuel Beckett’s revolutionary 1953 classic, one that’s famous for its frustrating pauses and pin-drop silences. Yet although it has its fair share of waiting, director James Macdonald’s new West End staging is a comparative breeze – its starry central duo Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati swap hats and tumble across the stage, giving jaunty nods to the music hall performers that influenced Beckett’s offbeat wit.

They’re an unlikely but memorable double act: as Estragon, Msamati looks like a hunter whose prey has won, slumped in his fur hat as Whishaw’s nimbler Vladimir scurries round him, desperate for entertainment as they hang around waiting for the title’s Godot to appear. “Never neglect the little things,” says Whishaw, diligently doing up his flies after a piss – and Macdonald’s intricate production certainly doesn’t, making a running joke of the fact that this bedraggled dandy is wearing tracksuit bottoms, and miming the zip he might have aspired to in brighter days. Sometimes, Whishaw’s performance edges into the mawkish: there’s a borderline audience “aww” as he says “I felt lonely” with a hint of Paddington-esque wistfulness. But it’s undercut by his tricksy intelligence, and by Msamati’s beautifully portrayed gradual dislocation from time and space, constantly tugged back to reality by his spryer friend.

Soon, they meet characters colourful enough to light up his production’s script-mandated grey, desolate setting, with obligatory stumpy tree. Jonathan Slinger is as suave as a circus ringleader in the role of enigmatic stranger Pozzo, his cruelties as precise as his pencil-thin moustachio, while as his abused servant Lucky, Tom Edden moves with the wild-eyed stiffness of Charlie Chaplin after a century-long speed bender.

It’s 15 years since Waiting for Godot had a West End production, with garlanded actors (and real-life besties) Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart larking about in rags on the same stage at Theatre Royal Haymarket. Since then, London’s own economic landscape looks a lot bleaker. “It’s a scandal to treat a human being like that,” blurts out Whishaw’s Vladimir, horrified by the rope-bound Lucky’s mistreatment. The endearing naivety in his voice gets an audience laugh – but it’s still hard not to draw connections between the sight of this servant, gratefully yoked to the system that’s destroying him, and the way real people’s lives are pointlessly restricted and wasted in this city’s harsh economic climate, whether they’re cortisol-and-caffeine-fuelled city workers or homeless people clustered in doorways outside the theatre.

Sometimes, it feels like Macdonald’s production could sit a bit longer with this play’s discomfiting moments, especially in the first act. But its power builds after the interval, swelling into existential gloom as Beckett’s text teases us with lines that constantly prod at the directionlessness of both his play and the audience watching it: “Let us not waste our time in idle discourse,” says Vladimir, witlessly doing just that.

Whishaw has said that when he was 18, seeing Waiting For Godot made him drop out of his art foundation course and decide to become an actor. So it’s refreshing to see him using his star power to lure new, younger audiences to the theatre (if they can afford it) for a night of productive boredom – at a seven-decade-old play that still feels completely, refreshingly at odds with the bustling streets and frantic entertainments around it.

Theatre Royal Haymarket, until 14 December; trh.org.uk