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An acclaimed production of Waiting for Godot arrives at the end of the month from Dublin. Director Peter Reid has done Beckett for 15 years – from the existential author’s novellas to his plays in over 20 productions in Ireland. A fortuitous meeting between friends at a dinner party resulted in this particular production making its way over to Hong Kong for its first performance outside the UK. “It’s been sort of an obsession since I was a teenager,” admits Reid of Beckett, who he read exclusively for some years. “He delivers in a paragraph what other authors take 200 pages to do.”

If you know of this existential classic, you might wonder how you actually sit through two hours featuring a pair of men on a stage with basically no set, a couple of props, and their absurd dialogue. Waiting for Godot debuted in 1953 in Paris to immense controversy for the way it challenged people’s fundamental preconceptions of what a play should be, shooting the then anonymous Beckett to instant fame. It has received both critical praise and damnation, standing ovations to large crowds walking out after the first act – nevertheless, it has proved to be one of the most significant plays of the last century. Waiting for Godot doesn’t really have a plot per say, it’s really just about two guys waiting for someone name Godot. Scholars have deemed it a play about hope, the human spirit, salvation (God-ot), even friendship. “I don’t think it’s important who Godot is,” offers Reid. “It’s more about these two guys waiting.”

The Hong Kong run of the play reunites two original cast members, John Burke and Dermot Magennis, from Reid’s first production of WFG. Reid claims that he chose them for their acting and their looks, or make that lack of looks, to fit the role of two guys on a road. “Other actors, they didn’t look like tramps. [Burke and Magennis] are not pretty, you can almost smell the dirt on them.”

 “It’s accessible Beckett, [we’re] very honest with the text,” says Reid of his approach. “We play it straight, and we’re not doing anything not on the page.” And Reid reassures that everything, even Beckett, is funnier with an Irish accent. Bourree Lam