Every once in a while a show comes along that makes you go, “They took what?! And they mixed what with what?!” And then you go again, “They took Beckett’s Waiting for Godot? And they mixed it with an escape room?!” The idea behind Escape from Godot is both audacious and irreverent at the same time. The actual experience itself is both audacious and irreverent, but still maintains a strong fidelity to the source material. Which is all to say Escape from Godot absolutely works, when it seems like it should not.
The basic premise of the experience is that there are some highly litigious folks from Samuel Beckett’s estate hunting down unauthorized performances of his material and you’ve got to help the company get to the end of the show. But regardless of what the audience does, the actors refuse to break character. It’s up to you to save the day and break the cycle of existential dread.
As creators Mister and Mischief (Andy and Jeff Crocker, the husband and wife duo behind the show) are fond of saying to prep the audience: “The show is the game. And the game is the show.” That’s both true and explains how their piece works on so many levels. Escape from Godot blends an escape room with a (semi)-traditional version of Waiting for Godot, and then adds a dash of immersive theatre to make the whole thing pop. Each element informs the rest and treating the piece as solely as one form or the other means missing out on the full experience. This has the added benefit of allowing the escape room part of the experience to innovate. Live actors become part of the puzzles as both solutions and questions; stage cues become keys to move the action along. If this was just a different spin on an escape room with a clever conceit, it would still be worth going to. That it is more than that makes Escape from Godot a good entry point for those unfamiliar with immersive theatre. Attendees can get a taste of what good immersive theatre can do within the structures of both an escape room and traditional theatre.
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But the way Waiting for Godot (and its requisite absurdist tendencies and accompanying existentialism) are grafted onto the whole thing is what elevates Escape From Godot. Beckett’s play brings to life an absurdist scenario which highlights any number of existential questions. Escape from Godot giddily riffs on the material with that touch of irreverence I mentioned earlier, but never actually loses sight of the ideas Beckett was playing with. (If anything, Mister and Mischief have actually cranked up the existential dread here.) I’ll stop now and say, if you’re worried you won’t get what’s going on in this hybrid show, you don’t have much to worry too much. The experience works fine on its own, and even a passing familiarity with the original is enough to pick up what they’re putting down. (I’m sure some things will make more sense the more in depth your knowledge of Beckett, but it’s just a bonus.)
One of the defining features of Waiting for Godot is the recursive loop that its characters find themselves in and those recursive loops feature prominently in Escape from Godot as well. In fact, they’re a key piece of many of the puzzles that audiences will encounter during the show. The experience may in fact make you wonder if you’ll be immediately thrust into another loop upon breaking out of the previous one. Moves like that allow Mister and Mischief to harness what’s helped the original Godot endure throughout the years while taking advantage of a new method of delivery.
Those new methods of delivery, Mister and Mischief’s grasp of the source material, combined with their willingness to play with it and tie all of those things together makes Escape From Godot one experience you won’t to wait on.
Escape from Godot runs Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through March 24. Learn more about Mister and Mischief.
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