It was George Costigan’s idea that he and Matthew Kelly should do Waiting for Godot together as Vladimir and Estragon, the two men waiting for the title character who never comes in Samuel Beckett’s play that revolutionised twentieth century drama. Watching these two very different veterans of stage and screen spark off each other as they riff on Beckett’s piece of existential vaudeville in which ‘nothing happens twice’, you can see why it was such an inspired notion.
“This is a play about love,” says Kelly of Godot, in which the everyday chemistry between life long friends is laid bare in all its mundane glory. “For two people like us, who’ve known each other for fifty eight years – and I think Vladimir and Estragon have known each other for that long - it’s kind of an ideal time for us to do it. And we might get it right this time.”
Dominic Hill’s new production that opens at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre prior to dates in Liverpool and Bolton will be the fourth time Kelly has done the play, with previous stints in 1972, 1986, and 2012. Costigan has only done it once before, at Manchester’s Library Theatre in 2008. It was a production that left its mark.
“There was a Saturday matinee where the audience laughed their faces off,” Costigan remembers. “They took us all to a place where we were following them and finding stuff, because they were in such a state, and took us to a place where we went, ‘is there a gag down there as well?’
“Come the evening show, we couldn’t wait to get out there, but when we did, zilch. Except that, at the end, they clapped their hands off. They had the most fantastic evening. Just a very different evening to the audience at the matinee. I’ve never been in a play that can do that, so I’m very, very, very, very happy to be doing it again.”
Costigan and Kelly met on their first day studying drama in Manchester more than half a century ago.
“We get to college and meet everybody,” Costigan remembers, “and there's this tall bloke, and he's quite funny and all that. Then you get to the middle of November in first year, he's not there. Where is he? What's happened? He's only off doing panto with Hylda Baker.”
Both men went on to work at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre during its 1970s heyday.
“George was there first,” Kelly remembers, “and then, because his company went down to the West End with Willy Russell’s play, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert, it created a vacuum, and they needed actors really quickly. So while they were all living it up, I was in the company, and then a year later, our company went into the West End with Funny Peculiar, and then we all went our separate ways.”
Costigan and Kelly’s work together since has included playing Lennie and George in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and in Don Quixote, with Costigan playing Sancho Panza to Kelly’s Don Quixote.
“The relationship that George and I had with Lennie and George is not dissimilar to Vladimir and Estragon,” Kelly points out. “I think it's how men and women are with each other, trying to pass the time, trying to find ways of letting yourself know that you exist. It's a humanity play. The more I read it, the more I think it's a joyful thing, even though it's heartbreaking.”
Both men acknowledge their differences as actors.
“The great thing about George is that he's incredibly honest, he can't help but tell the truth,” says Kelly.
“Which is sometimes unfortunate,” Costigan chips in.
“George is much more inventive than I am,so you have to keep up.”
“I get bored easy,” is Costigan’s excuse. “The biggest question about Waiting for Godot is why are people still doing it? And it's because in terms of human life, it’s timeless. It's no surprise that he's got a young boy, a big fascist bully and a working class slave. And then there are these two bums. One of them is a philosopher, the other one is instinctively bright. He's covered humanity. This is a play about all of us.”
Waiting for Godot, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 20thFebruary-14thMarch.
The List, February 2026
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