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This article was published 05/06/2025 (501 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On a sweltering May afternoon, with an apocalyptic smokescreen descending upon the ruins of a burned-down monastery in St. Norbert, director Rodrigo Beilfuss leads rehearsals for a play that’s frustrated him every day since preparation began in April.

“It’s killing me in a beautiful way,” the artistic director of Shakespeare in the Ruins says with a smile.

The work he’s discussing is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a play that since its première has confounded, confused, delighted and enlightened audiences the world over.

Called an “acrid cartoon of the story of mankind” in 1956 by New York Times reviewer Brooks Atkinson, Godot opens on June 13 in St. Norbert, with an estimable cast led by Arne MacPherson’s Vladimir, Cory Wojcik’s Estragon and Tom Keenan’s Pozzo.

This season at the Ruins, the company is producing Godot in repertory with Macbeth, which opens tonight, directed by Emma Welham.

Last produced by SiR as an award-winning feature film in 2020 as a pandemic pivot project, the Scottish-based play features Darren Martens in the titular role, alongside Lindsay Nance (Lady Macbeth), Tracy Penner (Banquo), Ray Strachan (Macduff) and three actors — Keenan, Liam Dutiaume and Mackenzie Wojcik (Cory Wojcik’s son) — who will straddle the worlds of Beckett and Shakespeare by appearing in both productions.

Welham, making her professional directing debut, says that like Godot, Macbeth is a challenging, layered piece of theatre that demands consideration of tragic structure, the presence of the supernatural and the masks its characters wear to cover their private selves.

In complementary ways, both directors agree, the works wrestle with human nature, trust and the fallibility of the universe.

“Throughout the course of the play — spoiler alert — Macbeth becomes a tyrannical ruler, and this show really asks the question of how we’re willing to stand up to it. What are we willing to do to stand up against injustice? It asks the question of who we put our trust in and why,” says Welham, who just finished her first year at the National Theatre School’s directing program in Montreal.

“The central image of the show I return to is when Lady Macbeth says, ‘Look like the innocent flower / but be the serpent under’t.’”

Nothing is exactly as it seems, and as in Godot, the work calls into question what is ever knowable about the characters we watch onstage or meet in day-to-day life.

At the rehearsal for Godot, the cast and crew are working their way through the particularities of the movement and dialogue in Beckett’s two-act tragicomedy, so clearly described in the script that each time the slavish Lucky (Dutiaume) moves a muscle, it must perfectly follow — or blatantly ignore — the orders of Keenan’s prim Pozzo.

“It’s relentlessly specific,” Beilfuss says, again smiling.

“Can you propose a rhythm for us?” MacPherson asks the director after his Vladimir and Wojcik’s Estragon ran through a playful tête à tête.

Moments later, Keenan tests his character’s coachmen’s whip, and soon, Pozzo is smoking a pipe and discarding the bones from a bucket of freshly consumed St. Norbert fried chicken.

Nearby, Mackenzie Wojcik, his father and Dutiaume kick around a hacky sack in the shade of a monastery wall.

After about an hour, stage managers decide it’s time for a break, suggesting the cast drink water and take respite from the sun.

“I don’t know where a logical place to break is,” Keenan says.

“That’s the problem with this play,” says Beilfuss, laughing.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com