Stratford Festival review: Paul Gross and Tom McCamus excel amid the absurdist humour of Waiting for Godot

From left, Tom McCamus as Estragon and Paul Gross as Vladimir, Waiting for Godot. Stratford Festival 2026.

Are they alive or dead; on Earth or in Hell? Why can’t they remember anything from one day to the next? Who is Godot and why are they waiting for him?

Those questions and more are never answered in director Molly Atkinson’s production of Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play, Waiting for Godot, at the Stratford Festival. While we don’t get a lot of answers, we do get a lot of questions – many philosophical, some more practical – asked and then quickly forgotten by the play’s two main characters, Estragon (Tom McCamus) and Vladmir (Paul Gross).

Set on a stage that feels like a vast, empty desert with a single dead tree in the middle, this production relies entirely on an unending conversation between Estragon and Vladmir, with a couple welcome interruptions from the strange Pozzo (Jonathan Goad) and his captive servant on a rope, Lucky (David W. Keeley).

Thanks to the considerable talents of both McCamus and Gross – and their onstage chemistry – the 50-year friendship between Estragon and Vladmir is readily apparent. While they occasionally bicker and Estragon threatens to leave Vladmir altogether, any animosity is overshadowed by the love, banter and a codependency the pair clearly relies on to get through the boredom, physical discomfort, hunger, frustration and just plain bizarreness they experience as they wait for Godot.

Though the banter between Estragon and Vladmir – and Pozzo when he is onstage – is at once entertaining, deeply thought-provoking and humorous, it’s the physical humour that really keeps this production on a good pace. From punches thrown and Lucky stepping on Estragon’s already painful feet to myriad hat-switching, the pulling of Lucky’s rope and an outright dogpile in the second act, the way each character moves and staggers about the stage seems both hilariously unintentional and immaculately choreographed.

The costume design is also quite intriguing. The ragged, ill-fitting clothes worn by Estragon, Vladmir and Lucky are contrasted somewhat by Pozzo’s all-red getup – a dress coat, checkered suit, bowler hat, leather gloves and sunglasses. Though Pozzo is better dressed than the other characters, Goad’s portrayal of the character, while also funny, gives the impression that while he may have once been well-to-do, he has since fallen on hard times as he now finds himself dragging Lucky by a rope through the desert – apparently to sell him at the fair.

The impression I got from the costume and set design in this production was that the characters were in some reimagining of the Depression-era Dust Bowl, where nothing grows and everyone is waiting for something or someone to show them the way out of their purgatorial prison.

Adding to all the strangeness in this play is the music. In my notes from opening night, I describe the music as brief, upbeat and somewhat electronic in nature. The production begins with that not-quite-discordant music, which includes some kind of choir singing, and it abruptly stops right before the stage lights come up and we first see Estragon and Vladmir.

Almost equally as abruptly with more of a fade-to-black feel, the music returns at the end of the production to close out the play. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense, which is good because the play as a whole doesn’t really make a lot of sense, and it’s not supposed to.

I really enjoyed the Stratford Festival’s 2026 production of Waiting for Godot. If, like me, you enjoy absurdist humour and plots that don’t really go anywhere, you’ll probably enjoy it too.

Waiting for Godot runs at the Festival Theatre until July 31.