Real-life friends Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are making their Broadway debut in tragicomedy play Waiting for Godot, written in 1952 by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.
Previews for the play kicked off over the weekend, with opening night scheduled for September 28.
The play, directed by British theatre director Jamie Lloyd, is generally considered to be one of the best and most enigmatic plays of all modern literature. It’s certainly a tall order, marking Reeves’s Broadway debut and Winter’s first stage production in more than 40 years.
The 60-year-old previously made his Broadway debut in the 1977 revival of The King and I, and also played John Darling in the 1979 stage adaptation of Peter Pan.
Ahead of the preview, People revealed exclusive portraits of the Bill & Ted stars in the stage production. Shot by photographer Andy Henderson, the photos are said to capture how Lloyd’s production will “embody the acclaimed existential work’s vast emptiness.”
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What is Waiting for Godot about?
Reeves and Winter are portraying the roles of Estragon and Vladimir, respectively, two acquaintances who are waiting for someone named Godot, who they believe will provide them with salvation.
In the first act of the two-act, play, the pair meet by a leafless tree, where they wait for the mysterious character. As they wait, they have wide-ranging conversations that discuss everything from recent grievances to philosophical musings.
After some time passes, they encounter a traveller named Pozzo and his silent servant, Lucky, who briefly stop to converse. Estragon and Vladimir also eventually meet a boy who tells them that he is a messenger from God and that Godot will arrive the following day.
However, in the second act of the play, the tree has since grown leaves, while Godot is still nowhere to be seen, causing the characters to be left in a state of existential uncertainty.
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Who else is starring in Waiting for Godot?
In addition to Reeves and Winter, the 2025 stage production stars Michael Patrick Thornton (Private Practice, A Million Little Things) as Lucky. Thornton previously worked with Lloyd in the 2023 Broadway revival of A Doll’s House. Brandon J. Dirden (The Americans) stars as Pozzo, while relative newcomers Zaynn Arora and Eric Williams portray the Boy.
The staging marks the fifth Broadway production of the play. Previously, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart portrayed Estragon and Vladimir in a 2013 production. A 2009 revival likewise starred Nathan Lane as Estragon, John Goodman as Pozzo, John Glover as Lucky, and Bill Irwin as Vladimir.
In an April 2014 featurette, Winter said that the casting “was such a weird serendipitous thing, it just felt right.”
“It didn’t feel easy but it felt right,” he continued. “And you know, knowing your approach to theater and stripping things down and the Beckett being so stripped down by nature, it just felt like such a fit that I was like, sh-t, if Jamie doesn’t wanna do it, I don’t know if it’s worth doing at all.”
How can I see Waiting for Godot?
The 2025 production is scheduled to run at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre from Sept. 28 through Jan. 4, 2026.
