What’s the story?

Two unnamed women have a short yet vast conversation in real-time, seemingly borrowing the initial conceit of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, but through a contemporary lens with two Gen Z protagonists in modern London. Where the show diverts from its namesake is in both its brevity and its even firmer focus on two long-waiting characters, with no one else passing their way and even the titular Godard given no importance, even going unmentioned as the women drift further together while their discussions threaten to push them apart.

When and where did it play?

Waiting For Godard appeared as part of The Cockpit’s scratch night series, Theatre In The Pound, performed during their October event.

This review was made possible by co-performer Anamaria Burduli, who invited me to view the performance in exchange for an honest review.

To keep up to date with any future productions or expansions of Waiting For Godard, follow writer-performer Nini Ugulava on Instagram

Spoiler-Free (because I wouldn’t know how!) thoughts:

Famously, Jerry Seinfeld and co brought to concept of a comedy series “about nothing” to the world with both acclaim and longevity, and one could argue that writer-performer Nini Ugulava’s short play opens with a similar premise. Playing unnamed characters, Ugulava and co-star Anamaria Burduli alternately park themselves or stroll about the stage as if its one or both of their home, and seem initially to have already run out of topics for conversation.

Something truly relatable at any age, yet somehow distinctly modern, is being so bored that you debate the finer points of how to describe your boredom, to have at least something to contribute to the all-consuming silence. Ugulava and Burduli begin Waiting For Godard as such, and the effect allows us to understand that whatever it is that the pair are waiting for, they’ve surely been waiting for quite some time. Doing Seinfeld proud, the mundanity of the conversation is actually very funny, and Ugulava’s script takes advantage of this to establish their dynamic without having to stop the momentum of the already time-crunched performance. By the time she smoothly diverts into richer, less comfortable themes, we feel we know them well enough to follow these complicated trails of thought.

Referencing French-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in its title, the play casts its actors, it could be assumed, as variations of themselves. They are not in wait of some mysterious figure to arrive, but living in the hope of a figure like Godard to raise them out of their humdrum. Ugulava plays, true to form, a writer-performer, with Burduli cast as a fellow actor equally as hard-up for work – the pair discuss their appearance when crying, and the struggle to successfully do this on stage, and Ugulava is notably irritated by a fellow thespian criticising her writing. Were I more the note-taking type, her ferocity in demanding, “Who are you to criticise my work?” may have left me mortified, aimed at her co-star or not!

Both performers fit seamlessly into the deceptively complex world of Waiting For Godard, just actorly enough to sell the art-about-artists ideas but remaining human and off-the-cuff throughout. Ugulava brings touches of whimsy to her performance, allowing herself to drift into fanciful ideas about their craft, while Burduli is a winning foil with a sardonic but caring touch to her delivery. Acting as co-director, with outside support from Natalia Jugeli, Ugulava completely ignores the impulse that must be there, to make yourself the real star of the piece and leave your colleague out to dry in a glorified bit-part, giving Burduli just as much to work with both as a playwright and as a director.

Clocking in somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes, there is so little time to give to Waiting For Godard, and yet so much that can be taken away from it. Though the tight turnaround obviously restricts her ideas somewhat, there are moments of promise alongside others where everything is exactly in its place, where Ugulava’s script is tightly-shaped and precisely-aimed enough that the constraints seem not to matter. Somewhere between a genuine conversation which happens to be available to watch in real-time, and an abstract theatrical piece with one foot in reality and the other in fantasy, there is Waiting For Godard, and I for one would welcome an expanded time-slot to see how much these characters could say with so little to discuss.

Final Thoughts

Reverent. Explorative. Refreshing.

So much of the arts seems to be devoted to artists, to these grand intellectuals who never get their shot. What is surprisingly enjoyable about this short play is how little reverence it has for its characters – they’re ordinary, perhaps even a bit bland, and yet this is what makes them so familiar, and so eminently watchable.

Given the brevity of the performance, I’ll be forgoing the star rating for Waiting For Godard, but I can safely say that my interest was piqued by the script, its characters, and its seeming willingness to just be, and I look forward to seeing what Nini Ugulava’s future catalog might consist of.