Theater really is absurd when the best thing about a Beckett production is the language.

Beckett's post-World War II masterpiece, through its abrupt dialogue and magnificent silences, is supposed to make the audience conscious of language's inability to convey meaning. Real communication between people was no longer possible after a period of extreme cruelty and destruction left humanity in a broken state; words, especially, were no longer adequate.

This 50th-anniversary production of Godot has the disadvantage of the passage of a half-century. Audiences today seem more ready to laugh than reel from its tragicomic content. If the 1950s were too close to the war's end to laugh at much, Beckett's self-deprecating characters are now greeted with that much more warmth than in their originally vapid reception on Broadway.

For all that audiences may have advanced in the past 50 years, the same cannot be said of the production values in this revival. As a veritable Godot junkie, thanks to the unforgettable commentary of a high school English teacher, I have to express my disappointment here. Godot is a hit-or-miss type of play-you're either baffled or bewitched upon reading it, and, frankly, its staging is difficult to pull off engagingly with the level of sincerity that it demands. There is little room for the in-between in this existential drama. Unfortunately, this production is too middling to overcome the problems standing in its way.

Gogo and Didi, the tramps whose poignant patience in waiting for the unknown, elusive Godot along a deserted road makes up the main content of the play, are well portrayed by actors Joseph Ragno and Sam Coppola, respectively. Coppola, in particular, seems to own his role, conveying Didi's wistful intelligence with compelling authenticity in his expressions and demeanor. Ragno's performance, on the other hand, takes a while to warm up, but his overly eager antics, reminiscent of Nathan Lane, eventually give way in Act Two to some genuinely moving moments with Didi.

The best scenes, overall, contain only the two leads. Lucky (Martin Shakar) is horrifically underused and ignored, even for a slave, and Pozzo (Ed Setrakian) never lives up to his potential, leaving the scenes with all four incredibly tiresome to watch. The venue itself-a church-turned-theater-adds to the difficulty. While the architecture does much to create an appropriate atmosphere of gloomy comfort, the stage is far too large for a play this intimate, forcing the actors to scurry back and forth to fill up the space. When only Gogo and Didi have the spotlight, they work hard to draw the audience in with Beckett's piercing lines to fight being swallowed up by the vastness of the space.

The sets and lighting, moreover, pose the final hurdles to appreciating the show. The backdrop, presumably meant to represent a vast expanse of sky along the road, instead looks like the horizon of an ocean and provides no sense of what time of day it is. The actors, meanwhile, are artificially bound in movement onstage by a circle on the floor which, thanks to the effect of the strange blue lighting, makes it seem as if they are performing the entire play on the face of the moon. Director Alan Hruska blocks a portion of the action offstage, though, so why bother with the distracting floor design at all?

While Gogo and Didi wait for the anticipated salvation that Mr. Godot is sure to bring, if he ever arrives, the audience similarly waits for the saving moment in this production when everything will click. Ironically, it is Beckett's language above any of the production elements that saves us from writing it off so easily. By providing the voice of true human suffering, questioning, and defiance in the face of apparent futility, Beckett's dialogue proves that sometimes words are the best means to communicate the absurd.

In an otherwise tedious production, that's a major relief-and a surprise. It's clear that much has changed in the 50 years since Broadway first brought Beckett to the world. So few versions of Godot come around that credit must be given to any attempt to revive it for contemporary audiences. If you're looking for a production that lives up to the subtle power of Beckett's language, though, you're better off waiting for another Godot.