FOUR actors at the peak of their abilities, an iconic script and masterly direction add up to theatrical magic.

And that's what the capacity audiences at Malvern Theatres are being treated to this week.

In a crumbling Victorian music hall, a tree poking up through the stage floor, an odd quartet play out their days.

Estragon (Ian McKellen) and Vladimir (Patrick Stewart)grumble together and agonise apart like an old married couple, sharing ties of memory and forgetfulness.

Pathos is never far beneath the humour but this clearly consummate pair of vaudeville troupers can flick the moods as easily as their bowlers.

Ring-master Pozzo (Simon Callow) and his lumbering performing 'pig' Lucky (Ronald Pickup) introduce a different, harsher humour and pain.

Bucolic and bulging Pozzo is a garrulous goad for the willowy and mute Lucky, whose one outpouring of sound is a soaring cadenza.

This Sean Mathias production doesn't force the 'what's it all mean' question - he simply invites us to experience our four characters 'waiting for Godot'.

Like a finely wrought poem or piece of music we can simply wander/wonder over the surface of the work or dive in to explore new ways of looking at the world.

But it's best probably, in such hands as these, just to sit back and enjoy the passing of time - 'It would have passed in any case...but not so rapidly'.