In its 55-year history Waiting for Godot has attracted some striking and even startling actors. The American premiere of Beckett’s play was a disaster, thanks to the producers’ decision to advertise it as “the laugh sensation of two continents”, give a leading role to Bert Lahr, aka the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, and present the result to bewildered audiences in Miami. Myself, I’ve seen other comedians prove a lot more successful as the tramps Vladimir and Estragon: Robin Williams and Steve Martin in New York, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson here. But last night the appeal to popular taste moved from the comics to the comic books.

For fans of the movies based on those books, Sean Mathias’s revival will doubtless go down as the X-Men Godot, with Professor Xavier onstage with his foe, leader of the Brotherhood of the Mutants, evil Magneto. And why not, if it introduces new audiences to the play that a National Theatre poll rated as the greatest of the 20th century?

But Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen happen also to be superb classic actors — and they proved it with performances that were at once subtle and commanding, touching and funny, vulnerable and dignified and just about everything we could expect Vladimir and Estragon to be.

Beckett wanted the play set “on a country road”, with just a tree and a mound for decor. Stephen Brimson Lewis, who designs, adds rubble, a wall of broken brick and concrete and, oddly, a half-shattered proscenium arch. That’s presumably to pick up on the play’s oblique references to the theatre itself and to Beckett’s suggestion that the tramps are also clowns, second cousins to Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy. And one of the ways McKellen and Stewart tolerate their endless wait for the elusive Godot is by breaking into little dances, sometimes singly, sometimes together.

And you fully believe in that togetherness. Whether they’re wrangling or joking or simply passing time that would pass anyway, their quickfire repartee convinces you they’ve stuck by each other for the 50 years they claim and will do so for 50 more. Yet each is also fully individual: Stewart a bit of an intellectual, mentally lively, spiritually resilient, warm, kindly, but with a deep melancholy beneath his sweetness; McKellen a Northerner with a nose like a big purple wart, lugubrious, doleful and taking a dour relish in his misery.

Two men interrupt their chat. Simon Callow’s Pozzo is a red-faced, exotically moustachioed blend of showman, huntsman and 18th-century grandee whose ferocious cruelty conceals insecurity and eventually gives way to baffled pain. He’s impressive, but maybe Ronald Pickup, playing his slave Lucky, could do more to bring out the true coherence of the most despairing speech even Beckett wrote. But there are no other serious complaints, least of all about the Stewart/McKellen combo. Few could bring such variety to the business of being bored. They’re moving, they’re witty, they’re inventive, they’re — well, excellent.

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