You don’t expect to find a slice of Eton College in deepest Dalston, but tonight a distinctly posh Waiting for Godot opens at the Arcola Theatre. The Beckett play is being directed by Eton’s former head of theatre, Simon Dormandy, and his Vladimir and Estragon are Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton, two of his past pupils. Together Palmer and Stourton (son of BBC’s Ed) are sketch comedy duo Totally Tom – perfect casting for Dormandy’s ‘reimagined’ production of the play, with its frequent references to music hall, the artform Beckett so loved.
Dormandy, an actor as well as a director, has worked with Cheek by Jowl and the Royal Shakespeare Company and taught at Eton 1997-2012; former pupils with successful acting careers include Tom Hiddleston (recently an acclaimed Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse), Eddie Redmayne (Marius in the Oscar-nominated Les Misérables), Harry Lloyd (BBC’s Robin Hood), Henry Faber (BBC’s The Hollow Crown), Julian Ovendon (Downton Abbey) and Harry Hadden-Paton (godson of Sarah, Duchess of York, who received rave reviews in his National Theatre debut in She Stoops to Conquer).
But even before Dormandy joined the Berkshire school, its drama department was attracting attention, having produced previous generations of acclaimed actors including Hugh Laurie, Dominic West and Damian Lewis, all of whom have achieved huge success in major American TV dramas – House, The Wire and Homeland, respectively.
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