Inside the Starry Opening Night of Waiting for Godot
“I’m exhilarated and terrified,” Keanu Reeves admitted on Sunday. In just a few hours, he would take the stage for the opening night of Jamie Lloyd’s Broadway revival of Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s acclaimed surrealist drama. “But, it’s a dream come true. It’s one of my favorite plays and it’s been an amazing process to bring it to Broadway with Alex.”
Indeed, Reeves has teamed up with Alex Winter, his co-star from 1989’s Bill Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its sequels, for his long-awaited Broadway debut. Thirty-six years after launching their adult careers as a pair of time-traveling knuckleheads, they now portray Beckett’s Estragon (Reeves) and Vladimir (Winter), old friends searching for meaning in an irrational world while spending their days waiting for a mysterious figure named Godot, who—spoiler alert—never shows up. Together, the actors’ cheeky, rapid-fire banter is like that of a comedy double act.
Thier performances are built on the actors’ 40-plus years of real-life friendship. “You can’t teach their kind of chemistry. They’ve lived a life together of a lot of shared memories and a lot of experiences that they’ve been through, and all of that becomes a major ingredient in the recipe of the production,” said Lloyd, who also helmed last season’s starry Broadway revival of Sunset Boulevard. “That, for me, is the real purpose behind the production. It’s sharing their friendship and seeing their kindness to each other and seeing all the ways they make each other laugh. It’s very true and it’s very honest to them.” The show plays into their history in more ways than one. In one thrilling moment, which had the audience—including Kieran Culkin, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Chris Pine, Bernadette Peters, and Reeves’s partner, mixed media artist Alexandra Grant—cheering, Estragon and Vladimir, reminiscing about the good old days, suddenly burst out into a Bill-and-Ted-style air guitar strum, complete with the goofy sound effect.
At Sunday’s splashy opening, Reeves and Winter’s bond was on full display on the red carpet, as they posed for photographs and answered questions from journalists together. When asked how they’ve changed over the years, Winter replied, “I’m happy to say, not much,” though Reeves, he said, is “maybe a little wiser, maybe a little bit more relaxed, and more sort of at ease with the world.”
It was Reeves who first floated the idea for this production to Winter, who made his Broadway debut as a child actor in the 1977 revival of The King and I. Though Reeves had never before performed on Broadway, he is also no stranger to the theater: He took in his first production at 17 when his stepfather, Paul Aaron, directed Claudette Colbert in A Talent for Murder. His first professional stage role came in Toronto in 1984, with Brad Fraser’s Wolfboy. “Being able to be a storyteller to a live audience and having them get together to laugh, cry, think, and experience the human condition is a special thing,” Reeves said. “It’s something that I really enjoy being a part of—it’s the connectedness of theater and the reason why I love performing on the stage.”
“There’s a mystery and an aura around Keanu, and that’s so compelling,” Lloyd said. “Sometimes he gets away with doing very little, but it makes so much sense and it’s so honest. He doesn’t have to strain and work hard for it. There’s something very magical about him.”
Tony winner Jonathan Groff, who co-starred with Reeves in 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections, has no doubt that Reeves’s Broadway bow will leave an indelible mark. “He’s the real fucking deal. Even though he’s one of the most famous people on the planet, his work ethic, his attention to detail, and his commitment to the craft are so supreme,” Groff said. “The first scene we shot together, he had three lines and I had this long monologue. He was so focused with his entire mind, body and soul invested in being great. And it was incredible.”
- Photo: Getty Images1/14
Alexandra Grant and Keanu Reeves
- Photo: Getty Images2/14
Alex Winter
