Samuel Beckett’s 1953 classic returns. Estragon and Vladimir, two forlorn men expecting a mysterious figure to appear, are this time portrayed by Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw. Ditching Derby hats and disheveled dress trousers, they wear Adidas sweatpants and filthy T-shirts, setting the play in the present. Under a gloomy gray willow tree, the duo chats endlessly in tones light and dark. Comical, bleak, absurd, James Macdonald’s production successfully keeps his audience, once again, restlessly waiting for Godot. “I’ve never seen the play’s dance along the border between artifice and truth so meaningfully executed,” Sarah Hemming recently reported in the Financial Times. —Jeanne Malle