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Keanu Reeves was deep in some narrow library stacks, wedged between biographies and Ph.D. theses, when — not for the first time that April afternoon — he started channeling one of Samuel Beckett’s most famous works. “Do you see me?” he said, standing tall with one hand outstretched and declaiming in the style of Estragon, from “Waiting for Godot.” “But do you see me?”
Beside him was Alex Winter, his friend of nearly four decades, the everlasting Bill to his most excellent Ted, ready to jump in and finish the thought. They had traveled to the University of Reading, in England, to tour its comprehensive Beckett archives, as they prepared to star this fall in “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway.
Reeves, who is making his Broadway debut playing the hapless Estragon, and Winter, as his more heady partner Vladimir, had already spent hours that sunny day examining manuscripts, poring over Beckett’s handwritten stage directions and looking at old photos. Most excitedly, they were juicing every possible detail out of James Knowlson, a twinkly-eyed 92-year-old Beckett biographer whose work is informed by his decades of friendship with the Nobel-winning Irish writer, who died in 1989. In the library, they covered Beckett’s connection with James Joyce (profound, and sometimes profane), his romantic relationships — “he was a bit of a philanderer, really,” Knowlson allowed — and his connection to God.
“Not as an intellectual,” Reeves said, searchingly. “But where did he land as a man?”
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Winter observed: “So much of the emotion of the play comes from the torment of faith, or no faith.” (Beckett was “intensely spiritual,” Knowlson said.)
The scholarly and literary research was just one facet in Reeves’s and Winter’s yearslong training for a hot-ticket production, which begins previews on Sept. 13 at the Hudson Theater. (Opening night is set for Sept. 28.) They also studied clowning, and Butoh, and sought out actors from previous productions of “Godot,” including the nonagenarian Alan Mandell, who gave one of Beckett’s favorite performances.
