Theatre Black Dog's Waiting for Godot, starting the second week of its run at the Balagan Theatre tonight, is a good but not great production. Or to be more specific, it'd be fair to say that they (mostly) manage to pull of in Act 2 what they fail to in Act 1, which is unfortunate given that the second act is half the length of the first. Waiting for Godot runs through April 20, tickets $15 adv, $20 at the door.

The main fault seems to be the actors, all of whom seem capable of only half their characters' requirements. The notable exception to this is Tom Spangenberg as Estragon, who manages the physical comedy, vaudevillian shtick and dialogue with aplomb. Unfortunately, paired with Ian Gerrard as Vladimir, Spangenberg's attempts to keep the pace up fail. Gerrard manages to bring to his Didi a good deal of gravitas, befitting his character's intellectual pretensions, but while he and Spangenberg do manage some great physical comedy together, Gerrard keeps the pace so slow that it never achieves the high-octane comic repartee that's a big part of the script. The most adventurous casting choice is Dan Conklin as Pozzo; whereas Pozzo is typically a large, bellicose man, Conklin goes for stuck-up and effete. The effect works for the character, but like Gerrard, Conklin never ups the pace, and together they make Act 1 drag along.

In Act 2, the actors manage to succeed because they play to their strong points. Particularly remarkable is Pozzo and Lucky's entrance in the second act, whereupon they find themselves entangled on the floor in a pile and eventually drag Didi and Gogo down with them. Gerrard's slow and hesitant delivery of the monologue in the scene allows Conklin, to ham it up, staring up at them (despite his putative blindness) and waiting for Didi to just shut up long enough to fill a pregnant pause with a sudden wailing cry for help. And when Gerrard and Spangenberg let their characters forget they've fallen down and just stretch out and relax in a pile of human desperation, they manage the brutal mix of music hall humor and existential dread that made the play famous.

Overall, Black Dog's Godot is a pretty by-the-book production, which is due both, we suspect, to fear of the Beckett estate (which allows little deviation from the author's wishes) and the almost cultish devotion many theatre artists have to Beckett's wishes themselves. Watching Gerrard pace about the stage for long periods in utter silence, save for the harsh tap of his footsteps on the floor, we suspect that at least the director if not the actors have read Beckett's production notes (available both in the production journal and letters to his American collaborator), since this was one of Beckett's frequent suggestions. That said, more productions should take note of Beckett's own admission, in a letter from 1956: "When in London the question arose of a new production [of Godot], I told Albery and Hall that if they did it my way they would empty the theatre."