Bill Irwin’s ‘On Beckett’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company
By • March 5, 2026 0 494
“These two threads of work — baggy-pants comedy and Samuel Beckett’s writing — they just seem to connect.”
In an interview in the Shakespeare Theatre Company program, Bill Irwin explains that, as a boy, the future author of “Waiting for Godot” frequented the variety theater in Dublin. “His descriptions of physical business, his stage directions and his description of characters’ costuming often seem to echo the business of music-hall comics.”
From the intertwining of these threads grew “On Beckett,” an enlightening evening with Irwin running through March 15 in STC’s 451-seat Michael R. Klein Theatre. Developed at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, it premiered Off-Broadway in 2018 at the Irish Repertory Theatre.
Performed on a bare-bones set with a handful of props and costumes, a little lighting and sound and, briefly, a projection of Beckett’s grimly handsome countenance, the 90-minute show is a chance for its creator to shed his clown persona (not entirely). The show is deeply personal for Irwin, who will turn 76 on April 11.
Born in Santa Monica, California, Irwin happened on a path that made him a pioneer of New Vaudeville. He was an original member of Kraken, the experimental theater company founded at Oberlin College by Herbert Blau (one of the first American presenters of “Waiting for Godot”). After graduating in 1974, he attended Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, then helped launch San Francisco’s one-ring Pickle Family Circus.
Beckett’s work has been a subtext of Irwin’s career, which has involved writing, acting and choreographing for the stage, film and television. His and fellow clown David Shiner’s wordless, raucous “Fool Moon” won a Special Tony Award in 1999 and his portrayal of George in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” won Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play in 2005.
In “On Beckett,” Irwin — a loose-limbed six-footer with a Claymation face — combines conversational insights (“shared thoughts” is his term) with expressive, at times exaggerated recitations of a half-dozen passages from four works: the novel “Watt,” written during World War II, when Beckett served with the French Resistance; the collection of 13 stream-of-consciousness “Texts for Nothing”; the novel “The Unnamable,” like “Texts” written in the early 1950s; and, of course, the encounter with strangely tethered men that is “Waiting for Godot.”
Of these, only “Watt” was originally written in English. Beckett, who had earlier begun assisting fellow Irishman James Joyce in Paris, settled in France in the late 1930s. He apparently felt that writing in French gave his work — regarded as difficult and existential if not absurd — an impersonality that he found desirable. He would then make his own English translations.
When Beckett was awarded (in absentia) the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish presenter spoke of “Beckett’s pessimism,” which “houses … a despair that has to reach the utmost bounds of suffering to discover that compassion has no bounds.”
So an upbeat, engaging interpreter is definitely called for, perhaps someone like John Keating, the English teacher played by Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society.”
Imparting an actor’s perspective on Beckett, Irwin can sometimes bring to mind the late Williams, who he met on the set of the film “Popeye.” The pair later performed some two-man improvs and shared the stage with Steve Martin and F. Murray Abraham in the 1988 Lincoln Center Theater production of “Waiting for Godot.” In that revival, directed by Mike Nichols, Williams played Estragon (“Nothing to be done”) opposite Martin’s Vladimir (“I’m beginning to come round to that opinion”) and Irwin appeared as Lucky, the suddenly verbose creature at the end of a rope held by Pozzo, played by Abraham.
In 2009, Irwin played Vladimir opposite Nathan Lane. Back in 1992, he performed a one-man adaptation of “Texts for Nothing” at New York’s Public Theater. Most recently, in 2023, he appeared as the servant Clov in an Irish Rep production of Beckett’s one-act play (not the Avengers film) “Endgame.”
While declaring Beckett’s language to be “full of life force and a useful lens on desire,” Irwin admits that “it calls to me, but it also sometimes pushes me away.”
The comic side of Beckett’s tragicomedy comes to the fore about halfway through “On Beckett,” when Irwin announces: “It’s now time to put on baggy pants.” The audience is then treated to demonstrations of “clown shtick,” including several bits (“hat language,” neck compression, various stuck fingers and the backwards-jacket routine) familiar to Irwin fans.
Though “On Beckett” ends, quite movingly, with Irwin intoning number 11 of the “Texts for Nothing” from behind a lectern, his face in a spotlight, the heart of the show is his elucidation of “Waiting for Godot” — “this great Rorschach of a play.” Written as “En attendant Godot” in the late 1940s, the play premiered in Paris in January of 1953; its English-language premiere took place in London in August of 1955.
Discussing Lucky’s extended and incoherent (or is it?) monologue, which he recites in part, Irwin describes seeing Williams flying through the air to tackle him in the 1988 production; the only way to short-circuit Lucky’s seemingly interminable jabber is to forcibly remove his bowler hat.
Who is Godot? That is one of the play’s many open questions, which, according to Irwin, includes how to pronounce the name of He Who Never Comes. Though Americans say “god-DOUGH,” the English and Irish say “GOD-dough.”
“On Beckett” is an invitation to Beckett World by a captivating actor who continues to relish the challenges posed by a master of literary modernism. Seize the day!
On Beckett
Through March 15
Shakespeare Theatre Company
Klein Theatre, 450 7th St. NW
