WAITING FOR GODOT

Waiting for Godot

I first experienced Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot many years ago when I was attending University College Dublin. It was a really memorable experience.

Prior to college, in my younger years, I never missed drama productions by local or visiting theatrical groups in my home area in County Kerry. I even participated, without distinction, in a few dramatic efforts during my high school years. Many of the plays were written from a strictly nationalist or narrow Catholic perspective, which appealed to the Irish rural population fifty or so years ago.

Beckett’s Godot was a completely new experience from attending a traditional play, where the audience would see a narrative drama enacted, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It would be a story about human emotions, involving people dealing with love or hate or jealousy or some other aspect of the human condition. The best performers drew us into their world of tears and laughter, while we wondered how the third act would end. By comparison, Waiting for Godot has a minimal story line; it deals with two tramps on a barren stage waiting for a guy who vaguely promised that he would visit them.

While they are waiting, they eat, sleep, fart, argue, swap hats – anything, as Didi says "to hold the terrible silence at bay." They worry about how to pass the time, although they have great difficulty establishing any time frame. Yesterday and tomorrow blend into a perpetual present moment. They agree that they will spend the rest of their lives doing nothing!

Beckett clearly was not interested in dealing with heroes and scoundrels, the meat for so much Shakespearean drama, but rather in exploring the inherent angst, the inevitable anguish, of the human condition. In this world, we are confronted by the emptiness and meaninglessness of life. Waiting for Godot is a great example of what is commonly called The Theatre of the Absurd.


The second time I saw the play was in a university playhouse in Brooklyn, shortly after I immigrated to New York. I was accompanied by my then girlfriend, Aileen, who thought it was the most boring play she ever saw and who assured me that the Antarctic would melt before she would ever again go near a Beckett play! She has been true to her word in that promise!

A few months ago, my oldest daughter, Siobhan, much to her mother’s disgust, booked tickets for the two of us for the Roundabout Theatre production of Waiting for Godot, and, last week, we attended the play together. The actors were superb, true to the high standards we expect in a Broadway production, and all aspects of the staging were excellent. Still, quite a few people did not return for the second act, suggesting that Aileen is not the only one with a poor opinion of this wonderful play.

Siobhan and I talked a lot about our reactions to the Roundabout experience. We wondered what the play is really about. Is Beckett challenging us to focus on how our lives are often built around our hopes and dreams for tomorrow – for success, for winning the lotto, for anything that will enhance our paltry existence? Is he saying that our existence is defined by waiting, which, many people say, is the central theme of the play?

Or, we wondered, is the play about this strange character, Godot? He never arrives on stage, but he does send a child twice to say that he hopes to come the following day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!! There is a strong sense that this mysterious figure would never come, even if the play had ten acts. Didi and his good friend, Gogo, the two main characters, know very little about this man and, they are very unclear about what he can do for them – even if he does arrive.

Perhaps, Beckett was inviting his audience to focus on the futile way that people, throughout history, have looked for a hero, a superman, a saviour, a Godot who would make sense of the absurdity of life for them. Maybe, he was suggesting that we look in another direction, and, definitely not to any outside individual, for salvation and meaning.


foWaitingr Godot

I first experienced Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot many years ago when I was attending University College Dublin. It was a really memorable experience.

Prior to college, in my younger years, I never missed drama productions by local or visiting theatrical groups in my home area in County Kerry. I even participated, without distinction, in a few dramatic efforts during my high school years. Many of the plays were written from a strictly nationalist or narrow Catholic perspective, which appealed to the Irish rural population fifty or so years ago.

Beckett’s Godot was a completely new experience from attending a traditional play, where the audience would see a narrative enacted, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It would be a story about human emotions, involving people dealing with love or hate or jealousy or some other aspect of the human condition. The best performers drew us into their world of tears and laughter, while we wondered how the third act would end. By comparison, Waiting for Godot has a minimal story line; itdeals with two tramps on a barren stage waiting for a guy who vaguely promised that he would visit them.

While they are waiting, they eat, sleep, fart, argue, swap hats – anything, as Didi says "to hold the terrible silence at bay." They worry about how to pass the time, although they have great difficulty establishing any time frame. Yesterday and tomorrow blend into a perpetual present moment. They agree that they will spend the rest of their lives doing nothing!

Beckett clearly was not interested in dealing with heroes and scoundrels, the meat for so much Shakespearean drama, but rather in exploring the inevitable anguish of the human condition. In this Beckettian world, we are confronted by the emptiness and meaninglessness of life. Waiting for Godot is a great example of what is commonly called The Theatre of the Absurd.


The second time I saw the play was in a university playhouse in Brooklyn, shortly after I immigrated to New York. I was accompanied by my then girlfriend, Aileen, who thought it was the most boring play she ever saw and who assured me that the Antarctic would melt before she would ever again go near a Beckett play! She has been true to her word in that promise!

A few months ago, my oldest daughter, Siobhan, much to her mother’s disgust, booked tickets for the two of us for the Roundabout Theatre production of Waiting for Godot, and, last week, we attended the play together. The actors were superb, true to the high standards we expect in a Broadway production, and all aspects of the staging were excellent. Still, quite a few people did not return for the second act, suggesting that Aileen is not the only one with a poor opinion of this wonderful play.

Siobhan and I talked a lot about our reactions to our Roundabout experience. We wondered what the play is really about. Is Beckett challenging us to focus on how our lives are often built around our hopes and dreams for tomorrow – for success, for winning the lotto, for anything that will enhance our paltry existence? Is he saying that our existence is defined by waiting, which, for many people, is the central theme of the play?

Or, we wondered, is the play about this strange character, Godot? He never arrives on stage, but he does send a child twice to say that he hopes to come the following day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!! There is a sense that this mysterious figure would never come, even if the play had ten acts. Didi and his good friend, Gogo, the two main characters, know very little about this man and, they are very unclear about what he can do for them – even if he does arrive.

Perhaps, Beckett was inviting his audience to focus on the futile way that people, throughout history, have looked for a hero, a superman, a saviour, a Godot who would make sense of the absurdity of life for them. Maybe, he was suggesting that we look in another direction, and, definitely not to any outside individual, for salvation and meaning.