Samuel Beckett is rolling in his grave.

It’s the fault of director Tim Butterfield and his Is What It Is Theatre, because of their contemporary adaptation of the playwright’s existential masterpiece, “Waiting for Godot.”

Gone are the abstracts, the unanswered questions in a story of two natty tramps waiting for the man they don’t know, for death, for salvation. In their place is a story of two modern-day, shopping cart-pushing bums with no particular place to go, visited on a freeway overpass by a Mormon messenger, a gruff sheriff and his defeated but eloquently wise inmate.

Butterfield’s take is a disagreeable primer for Beckett newbies, that’s for sure. But for those who have absorbed modern theater’s most brilliant gem of commedia dell’absurd, and already puzzled over “Godot’s” mind-tickling puzzles, it’s a curious, skewed look that deserves all the attention we can give it.

Maybe it’s time Beckett — who fought against adaptations of his piece, and whose estate continues to fight them — lightened up and moved on.

There’s much in the Is What It Is production for “Godot” fundamentalists to drop jaws over and for the rest of us to relish. That our protagonists, tortured old Estragon (played wonderfully by Charles Sohn) and faithful compeer Vladimir (Kane Anderson), are homeless isn’t the most extreme change. It’s that Godot — their mystery man, now more directly implied to be God (which Beckett has always disavowed), though with a tweak he could easily be the dispenser at the methadone clinic — sends word to the duo not through the standard messenger, a cherubic young goatherd, but rather a Mormon missionary, decked out in short-sleeve white dress shirt and, for added metaphor, a Blues Brothers tie.

Meanwhile, passerby Pozzo (Rick Shipman, a hollering great) and his slave Lucky (Franc Gaxiolia, playing a selectively mute Shakespearian Fool) become impersonations of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and an inmate. Clever, but a novelty.

With so many of the blanks of this “Godot” filled in, what’s left is a play entirely about the existential crisis of waiting, of the meaning of existence for two homeless men. Strangely, Butterfield’s adaptation is also drastically less funny than standard productions are. I don’t quite know why. The cast does a fine job — only lightly dampened by Anderson’s inability to latch onto the beautiful rhythms of Beckett’s text, but otherwise enthralling enough to keep audiences awake throughout a play known for disconcertingly testing our patience.

Butterfield and company have taken “Waiting for Godot” in a bold direction, choosing to jettison some of what the play seeks to explore, deciding instead to emphasize its other questions. It’s effective on some levels, and sputters on others. But applause is due for taking the risk.