In a particularly brilliant stroke of casting, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who first appeared together as the titular characters in the 1989 film Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, will co-star in a new production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which has long been a star-magnet vehicle for big name actors.
According to director Jamie Lloyd, the “no-brainer” idea, which is set to land on Broadway in the fall of 2025, originated with Reeves.
“Their instant chemistry and their shorthand and their friendship is going to be so valuable,” Lloyd said. “This is a very deeply complex play, as we all know, but it’s also a very funny play, and they’re very witty people and their shared sense of humor in those movies and in real life is going to be very beneficial to the production.”
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Reeves, who will play Estragon and Winter, who will be Vladimir (no casting has been announced the play’s other two roles, Pozzo and Lucky), previously collaborated on two Bill & Ted sequels, first in 1991 and then nearly three decades later in 2020.
“We’re incredibly excited to be on stage together and work with the great Jamie Lloyd in one of our favorite plays,” the two actors said in a joint statement.
Lloyd is responsible for putting a number of Hollywood stars on the stage.
He directed Jessica Chastain in A Doll’s House on Broadway, Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard in London’s West End, which is about to transfer to Broadway, and is about to direct Sigourney Weaver in The Tempest in London.
Read it at The New York Times
