There’s a picture on Garry Hynes’ wall in the office of Druid Theatre, the Galway-based theatre company she co-founded with actors Marie Mullen and Mick Lally in the mid-1970s as Galway’s first professional theatre company. The picture is of Hynes’ 1982 production of Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s seminal 1953 play, which over the last half century has become a revered institution that has acquired a mainstream status rare for something that is a key text of the post Second World War avant-garde. In 2016, Hynes returned to Waiting for Godot after thirty-five years for a production that has been praised both in Galway and abroad, and which this August will be seen at Edinburgh International Festival. With high-profile productions of Beckett’s play having been at something of a premium over the last few years, taking a fresh look at the play wasn’t initially on Haynes’ radar. “It wasn’t my idea,” she happily admits. “It was the idea of four actors from the Druid ensemble, w...
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.