Samuel Beckett’s hopeless hobos, Estragon and Vladimir, say there’s “nothing to be done,” and thus the only way to live is through the wait.But the man Gogo and Didi repeatedly say they are waiting for, Godot, is not death. Don’t let “the Academic” fool you: Godot is not God, not hope, not salvation, not necessarily the answer to their woes.

Beckett left the exact nature of the mysterious Godot open to individual interpretation, a concept not lost on Guilford’s Waiting for Godot student director, John Kazuo Morehead, who produced an opaque interpretation of Beckett’s most famous play.

By softening the capricious banter of Gogo (Cecily Fuller) and Didi (Jack Hilley) with a matted tone and pointed gumption, Morehead created a Godot not as revered and awesome as the fickle script could potentially allow.

As a result, Gogo and Didi’s vacant eyes remain an unsolvable riddle, and the point of our existence is even hazier.

It should be noted here that it is a major accomplishment in and of itself for a small group from a small college to successfully put on this full-length play of only five roles.

The credit for that success belongs to Fuller and Hilley, who read into their respective characters uniquely and without preconceptions of what they historically were presumed to be.

Fuller, a female playing a male (an imaginably difficult task itself), was nimble and convincing as Gogo, but found best success with lengthier lines, which unfortunately are few and far between. (Beckett prefers rapid back-and-forth banter over extended monologues.)

Hilley patiently played Didi, and with a contemplative wrinkled face, turned himself into the lost aging bum of Paris that he portrays.

The big surprise was Bradley George, who nearly stole the show as a camp Pozzo (only at Guilford would Pozzo have tweezed eyebrows, rouged lips, and a cheeky demeanor). George found an intriguing, flighty side of Pozzo likely never explored before.

Chris Imms played Lucky, Pozzo’s leashed carrier and servant, with guile and finesse. Imms found a place to pen up Lucky’s frustrations, and exerted them in the timely exasperation of a maltreated slave.

Only Beckett himself would truly know what to make of Lucky’s rambling nonsensical monologue in the first of two acts. Imms came close.

Thematically, Waiting for Godot could be considered a play about the old clich of the indefinable meaning of life.

Guilford’s Theater Studies department best examined those weighty, lofty issues of Godot with an impressive, coherent production of it.

Waiting for Godot ran in Bryan Auditorium for three nights, Feb. 7-9.