That's a wrap on 'Godot', Q&A with Arthur Bieber & stage manage with us

penny ryan photography

So that's a wrap for Waiting for Godot. A huge thanks to all our audiences, volunteers, sponsors and donors for supporting this production. Our community support means so much to us.

In this newsletter we share the melbournestagereview.com review, have a Q&A with one of Godot's youngest cast members, and ask whether you'd like to stage manage with The Ravens.

So that's a wrap!

On Saturday night, Waiting for Godot came to a close. Almost 1700 people saw the show — a testament to how discerning our audiences from Castlemaine and further afield are (!) and also, more seriously, proof of the need for good quality regional theatre. We could not be more grateful for the support of our community: our audiences, our volunteers, our sponsors and our donors. We are also so grateful to those of you who took time to answer our post-show questionnaire. Some of the comments made our day:

“It is such a delight to attend live theatre and as a Castlemaine local I'm thrilled The Ravens are here, making classic plays accessible through exceptional interpretations and highly engaging performances. Congratulations Ravens! Love your work! Your humour and humanity, both nuanced and overt in exactly the right places, are sublime.”

“World class production right here in Castlemaine!”

We promise to bring you more great theatre next year and a whole program of outreach events to appeal to you, whether you be a seasoned theatre goer or a new audience member. Thank you for being with us!

The reviews are in!

In the last few weeks we shared Australian Book Review's four-star review of Waiting for Godot and The Saturday Paper's glowing review, highlighting the need for regional theatre. This week we round off our reviews with melbournestagereview.com.

…driving to Castlemaine to finally see Waiting for Godot, my own wait for Godot was nearly over. I wondered less whether I would like it than how I would experience it.

The answer, this time, was wide awake and laughing.

Janice Muller's production for The Ravens Theatre Company is extraordinarily funny, its comedy keeping me tethered to every moment even as Vladimir (Tim Heath) and Estragon (Gus Read-Hill) struggle to find ways to fill theirs.

Heath and Read-Hill allow Vladimir and Estragon to be gloriously outsized. Faces stretch and crumple; postures sharpen and sag. Vladimir is bright-eyed and buoyant, while Estragon seems perpetually on the verge of drooping under the weight of some new indignity. At times, they resemble a pair of particularly bedraggled Muppets. Yet there is remarkable precision beneath the exaggeration: every grimace, pause and small adjustment of a bowler hat becomes material.

The comedy thrives on the problem Beckett has set them: how to fill time when the thing that matters is always going to happen later. Heath and Read-Hill find seemingly endless variations on this predicament…

Pozzo (Tim Rogers) and Lucky (Luke Lennox) complicate the picture. Until their appearance, Vladimir and Estragon can seem close to the bottom of things: shabby suits, failing boots, little to their names and nowhere in particular to go. Lucky, tethered by the neck and burdened with Pozzo's possessions, casts their predicament in a different light.

In fact, I found Lucky's arrival a little horrifying. Rogers gives Pozzo's authority a wonderfully pompous theatricality. He swells into the space, luxuriating in his own importance; even the business of being helped into his cape becomes an event. Rogers pitches the extravagance beautifully, finding the comedy in Pozzo's self-regard while making the power beneath it entirely credible.

Lennox's Lucky bears the material cost. The rope between them makes that power brutally concrete.

And then Lucky speaks.

Lennox's monologue hits like a punch to the face. Language comes in a torrent: fragments of argument and apparent sense accumulating, colliding and disintegrating almost faster than they can be apprehended. After Lucky's long silence, its force is startling. Lennox does not simply recite the famous verbal avalanche; he seems overtaken by it. The effect is potent, frightening and strangely exhilarating.

Against this, Vladimir and Estragon's apparently meagre existence begins to look different. They may be waiting, but at least they are free to leave. Except, of course, they don't.

By the second act, the relationship between power and dependence has shifted again. But it was the play's treatment of time and memory that began to get under my skin. Again and again, certainty about what has already happened dissolves. Repetition offers no reassurance; it seems instead to make one day less distinguishable from another. I found myself wondering what becomes of a life when the past cannot quite be held onto and the future is always where meaning is expected to arrive.

Then Vladimir names something I had been feeling for much of the play: “But habit is a great deadener”.

The line landed hard in my stomach. Habit gets them through. It also makes getting through enough. There is something frightening in the ease with which repetition can become existence: not choosing unhappiness exactly, but becoming sufficiently accustomed to it that tomorrow can continue to carry the promise of something different.

Perhaps this was what disturbed me most about their waiting. Godot began to matter less to me than the conviction that whatever might make life meaningful was somewhere other than here.

Muller's visual world is spare. A bare tree rises over the landscape; a rock provides somewhere to sit, sleep and wrestle with recalcitrant boots. Tall, blue-grey panels frame the space with indistinct organic forms. By the second act, the tree has produced a single, almost comically inadequate leaf. Night arrives with equal economy: a moon appears, suddenly and unapologetically theatrical.

Yet the waiting itself is full of activity. Between Heath and Read-Hill, irritation slips into tenderness; separation is repeatedly imagined and companionship repeatedly resumed. They bicker, clown, care for one another and contemplate leaving, only to remain together. For all my unease at lives spent waiting for something outside themselves, I kept thinking: I suppose this is a life too.

Perhaps that is what made their waiting so painful to me. Not that nothing is happening, but that what is happening seems insufficient to them. I wanted them to recognise what was already there: to stop treating meaning as something that might arrive tomorrow and claim whatever could be made from today.

For someone arriving very late to Waiting for Godot, I could hardly have asked for a better introduction. Muller, Heath and Read-Hill find all the immediacy in Beckett's strange rhythms: the jokes land, the silences hold, and the repetitions gather weight as the evening wears on. Rogers and Lennox bring real force to the darker world that presses in around them. The result is exquisitely performed: funny, painful and completely absorbing.

There are worse things, it turns out, than waiting a long time for Godot.

Q&A with Arthur Bieber

penny ryan photography

We asked Arthur Bieber, one of the two young actors sharing the part of Boy, what he loved about being part of Waiting for Godot.

Tell us a little bit about yourself — what year are you in at school and what are your favourite things?

I am in Year 4 at Castlemaine North Primary. My favourite things are playing soccer, researching bugs/insects/arachnids, tasting and learning about different cheeses, reading manga comics and discovering new bush walks and natural objects like crystals.

What have you enjoyed most about being in Waiting for Godot?

Meeting and spending time with the other actors, and having the opportunity to take the part.

What do you like most about acting?

Dressing up and the excitement of being on stage.

What sort of acting have you done before?

This is my first acting experience outside of school drama.

What have you learnt about yourself?

That I am able to learn and remember the lines.

Has Waiting for Godot given you ‘the acting bug’?

Yes, absolutely. I would love another chance to be in another production.

penny ryan photography

Would you like to stage manage with The Ravens?

The Ravens is a not-for-profit professional theatre company. That means all profits from our productions go back to pay the cast, creatives and crew. Our mission is to make the best theatre possible for our community with professional practitioners based in our community. As such, we're always pleased to find out who is around and who might want to get involved in the company.

The Ravens is calling for Expressions of Interest from people who would be interested in stage managing next year's shows.

If you are an experienced stage manager, please get in touch with us. But also please do contact us if you have no experience but are interested in learning how to stage manage. We are looking for people who are organised, have skills in problem solving and logistics and, most importantly, people who thrive in a creative and collaborative environment.

If you are interested, please contact Jane Montgomery Griffiths at eoiravens@gmail.com, including a paragraph about your experience and why you're interested in working with The Ravens. We'll endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible, and will always keep you in mind for future productions.

Exciting times ahead!

We at The Ravens are busy putting together our season for 2027 and a whole new raft of engagement activities, sponsor and donor initiatives and community outreach programs. Watch this space for our big announcement of next year's shows and what we will have to offer our patrons! If you'd like to get in touch with us, drop us a line via our contact page, or join our mailing list to hear the news first.

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Tote bags — $30. Printed by local legends Oni Streetwear in Hargreaves St, with two designs to choose from. Sturdy, with an internal pocket. Postage or local pick up.

Ravens pin — $8. Put a bird on it! Make those winter coats sing (or croak) with a show of support for Castlemaine's newest theatre company. Postage or local pick up.

Message us via our contact page with your order.

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From Castlemaine, with love —

The Ravens