Excellent or bogus? Hollywood stars to play Beckett’s tramps

 

It has been announced that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, stars of the Bill & Ted movies, will reunite to play Samuel Beckett’s Estragon and Vladimir in a Broadway production of Waiting for Godot, scheduled to open in autumn 2025.The production will be helmed by Englishman Jamie Lloyd, who has a track record when it comes to brining film stars to the stage. Among his productions are the Broadway revival of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal (2019) with Tom Hiddleston, the West End production of Chekhov’s The Seagull (2020-2021) with Emilia Clarke, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac (2022) starring James McAvoy, and the Broadway revival of A Doll’s House (2023) with Jessica Chastain.

In a joint statement, Reeves and Winter said, “We’re incredibly excited to be on stage together and work with the great Jamie Lloyd in one of our favourite plays.”

“It is a real honour to be collaborating with the brilliant Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter on Samuel Beckett’s sublime masterpiece — one of the greatest plays of all time,” said Lloyd.

The production will be produced by The Jamie Lloyd Company, ATG Productions, Bad Robot Live and Gavin Kalin Productions.

Reeves and Winter played the title characters in the 1989 comedy Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its sequels. Waiting for Godot will mark Reeves’ Broadway debut and a return for Winter, who appeared on Broadway in the 1979 production of Peter Pan playing John Darling opposite Sandy Duncan.