Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
by Samuel Beckett

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• ISBN13: 9780802130341
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Book Reviews of Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

Book Review: truly idiotic
Summary: 1 Stars

The American director Alan Schneider first met the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in 1955, after being hired to direct the United States premiere of ''Waiting for Godot'' in Miami. Schneider had come to Beckett's Paris apartment bursting with preproduction questions, especially regarding the identity of the title character. To Schneider's initial query, ''Who is Godot?,'' the laconic playwright famously replied, ''If I knew, I would have said so in the play.''

Henceforth, Schneider was to devote most of his career to realizing Beckett's stated intentions in his plays. But despite his fidelity to every letter of Beckett's text, and despite the participation of such popular clowns as Bert Lahr and Tom Ewell, the Miami production of ''Waiting for Godot'' was a resounding flop. Baffled by the metaphysical reverberations of a work that had been billed as ''the laugh riot of two continents,'' a third of the audience left at intermission. Others lined up at the box office not to purchase tickets but to ask for refunds. -from Robert Brustein's NY Times review of The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider

To read Waiting for Godot is to bitterly envy those lucky folks who actually had the privilege of walking out and demanding their money back. In a more just world they would have hunted down the playwright and horsewhipped him.

Here is the play in its entirety: Two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait by a tree for two days, expecting the imminent appearance of Godot. Instead they are visited by a master and slave, Pozzo and Lucky, and a boy who brings them a message that Godot will soon be there. The curtain falls. The crowd hisses.

That's it. Godot is obviously supposed to be God (though Beckett relentless fought against others finding meaning in the work) and the play presumably demonstrates the futility of human existence: waiting around for the God who never shows. Of course, this message is nothing new. In fact, it is central to the story of Christ. When he was being crucified, Jesus wailed: "Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?" It is in this moment that God/Christ came to understand man's despair and Christ then admonished: "Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do." So 2000 years ago, it was said better in a far superior drama; why sit through this piece of crap?

One delightful irony that I found is that Beckett was adamant that production of this play--which is supposed to show the folly of existence, the impossibility of communication, etc.--follow the strict guidelines that he envisioned:

In his autobiography, the American director Alan Schneider recalled his attendance with Samuel Beckett at the first run of Waiting for Godot in London in 1955. Whenever a line was misinterpreted or an extra piece of stage business was added, Beckett would clutch Schneider's arm and exclaim, in a clearly audible stage whisper, "It's ahl wrahng! He's doing it ahl wrahng!"1 That loud whisper still sounds in the ears of those who stage Beckett's plays now. No other dead dramatist remains such a daunting admonitory presence for his directors and performers. Where most great playwrights were content to write the text of a play, Beckett wrote the entire theatrical event. He specified, not just the words, but the rhythms and tones, the sets and the lighting plots, and these specifications are preserved in the remarkable series of notebooks whose publication by Faber and Faber is now completed with S.E. Gontarski's exemplary edition of Beckett's ledgers for productions of his short late plays.

Where most plays invite the active participation of actors, directors, and designers in determining the meaning of the work, Beckett's work demands that the meaning remains indeterminate. Where theater artists think of themselves as interpreters, any interpretation of a Beckett play is necessarily a reduction. With these plays, creative intervention seems like crass interference. The director is haunted by the playwright's stern ghost, frowning, clutching his arm, whispering at every deviation, "It's ahl wrahng!" -from Game Without End by Fintan O'Toole (NY Review of Books)

I mean that's just beautiful. Life is pointless, but it's my way or the highway. You've gotta love it. These poor existentialists have such a hard time keeping their story straight, you can sometimes almost feel sorry for them.

I took a Humanities class in High School and absolutely loathed it (some of you may recall my discussion of Ragtime which a teacher suggested I read for the class--see Review). This was one of the things we read and even as a callow youth of 15 or 16, I was flabbergasted at what a crock it was. Now that I'm older, crustier and, hopefully, wiser, I have even less patience with idiocy and this play is truly idiotic.

GRADE: F

Summary of Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

British & Irish Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Drama > British & Irish
• Continental European
• Teens