Waiting for Faro – Viking Theatre – Review
by Frank L.

Waiting for Far – written by Eoin Byrne
Until 1st April, 2023

The advertising handbill claims that Waiting for Faro is “a hilarious parody of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot where two unfortunate airline passengers wait at the air gate for a no-frills flight which never arrives”.  Waiting for Godot takes place on a country road by a tree. The back wall of the set for Waiting for Faro consists of a view of an airport from a terminal building. It could be any airport anywhere. It is however like a country road as it is a place of travel. There is a vertical structure containing the baggage sizer at the centre of the stage. It is a point where travellers stop which is a bit like Beckett’s tree.  On either side of the stage are a couple of mundane plastic chairs. They are new to the story. The entire set creates a location which emits the grim feeling of an airport terminal waiting area.

The play’s first iteration was as a radio play on Newstalk and it now comes to the stage. The play begins with two young women waiting at the gate for their flight to Faro. Occasionally, announcements are made over the public address system which have little or nothing to do with their flight to Faro. After a while, a bowler-hatted man with a rope around his neck arrives on stage. The rope is held by another bowler-hatted man who barks directions. He seems to represent the values of the no-frills airlines. This unlikely foursome now engage with each other. It includes an attempt to put a travel bag into the bag sizer and somewhat surprisingly a couple of songs to familiar tunes such as Petula Clark’s “Downtown” and Percy French’s “Phil the Flutter’s Ball”. Meanwhile, the public address system continues to give out announcements which are irrelevant to their plight. Because they are irrelevant and some of them are bizarre the audience laughs.  So the two women wait. It is a disparate collection of happenings.

The cast consists of Lisa Murphy, Elishka Lane, Dylan Tonge-Jones and Conor Duffy who have the difficult task of making it all gel. Given the amount of laughter from the audience and the applause at the end, they seem to have succeeded at some level. It’s not a play for a Beckett purist and offers no great insights into the original playwright’s work. It’s a light comedy that offers occasional laughs from its young cast.

Waiting for Faro –
Written by Eoin Byrne
Directed by Morgan Jones.
Performed by Lisa Murphy, Elishka Lane, Dylan Tonge Jones, Conor Duffy.