WAITING For Godot is being staged with an all-black British cast for the first time in a co-production between the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Talawa Theatre Company.

Samuel Beckett’s poetic and tragic contemplation of humanity and friendship features Jeffery Kissoon and Patrick Robinson in the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, two men waiting hopelessly, helplessly, haplessly for the elusive Godot.

They are joined by Fisayo Akinada, Guy Burgess and Cornell S John in the final play to be directed by Ian Brown as artistic director of the Playhouse, where the production’s premiere is running in the Courtyard Theatre before embarking on a national tour.

Arriving in Leeds fresh from starring opposite Sex And The City actress Kim Cattrall in Antony And Cleopatra in Liverpool, Jeffery is now in another production sure to attract attention beyond its starting point.

“There’s talk about getting this play into Japan, as we have a guy from Japan over here now, and I’d love to take it to the West Indies, where they’d love it, as we’re playing it as if Vladimir and Estragon are old guys from the Windrush generation and they’re now under the bridges with their Tennent’s lager,” says the Trinidadian actor.

The Beckett estate has given permission for the first all-black Godot production, having previously agreed to a South African production with two black lead actors and the role of Pozzo being played by a white actor.

Jeffery believes it brings new resonances to Beckett’s 59-year-old play.

“There are lots of things that echo with the black society, such as the issue of identity. If you’re a product of the slave trade, you have no identity apart from the one you’re give – you have ‘lost people’ with their culture gone – and so you go on a search for your real identity,” he says.

“It’s a long journey that you go on and each of us will answer that question differently.”

Jeffery’s next role will find him starring in another all-black production, this time Julius Caesar for the Royal Shakespeare Company this summer.

“There’s been such a cry among the black community for unity,” he says. “Bob Marley once talked of ‘Africa united’, but we’ve had so many dictators in Africa. Here is a Shakespeare play based around a dictator, or at least that’s how they see him and that’s why they kill him.

“But now we have a troupe of black people being united by being in a Shakespeare play together.”

Jeffery’s very first production was an all-black performance of another Shakespeare play, Macbeth, directed by Peter Coe at the Roundhouse in London in 1972.

“The difference now is that, at that time, people said black people couldn’t do it because of their accents, but now they think differently, and now we can use theatre and an incredible writer and be united in making Julius Caesar really work, exposing dictatorships in Africa.”

• Waiting For Godot is running at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until February 25, 7.45pm. Box office: 0113 213.