Ben Whishaw as Vladimir
and Lucian Msamati as Estragon
Waiting for Godot
Haymarket Theatre, London, November 2024
Photo by Marc Brenner
089 – Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
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The curtain rises on a country road. There is nothing but a lone, leafless tree in the empty landscape. Two shabbily dressed men meet, linger, and talk. They wait. Apparently, they have a rendezvous with someone named Godot, and they cannot move from the appointed location by the tree. Although whether it is this tree is uncertain, as is, who Godot is, and why they await him.
This is the unique setting of Samuel Beckett’s notoriously confounding landmark of modern drama, Waiting for Godot. The play is famous for its deliberate lack of conventional plot or exposition, such that the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett “has achieved a theoretical impossibility…a play in which nothing happens twice.” The play is renowned for its intellectual provocation, as a bleak existential rumination, as well as for the rhythm of its hypnotic language. Given its desolate philosophical landscape, Waiting for Godot is also surprisingly funny.
When En Attendant Godot was first performed in a small theatre in Paris in 1953, it was greeted by come critics and audiences with bewilderment and scorn, as it was on its English language premiere in London in 1955. However Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times urged audiences to see the production, promising that the experience would be ‘something that will securely lodge in the corner of your mind for as long as you live.” He was right about the lasting impact of Beckett’s unique creation.
As we record this episode an illustrious new production of the play is on stage at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, starring Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati, and directed by the inimitable James Macdonald. I was struck when taking my seat in the grand theatre in the Haymarket how far this play has come in the 70 years since its premiere in the tiny theatre in Paris – a staple of drama studies and prestigious production the world over. It’s provocation as a work of theatre remains the same, though, and I am delighted to be joined by Beckett expert, Dr Matthew McFrederick, to help survey this famously challenging landmark of dramatic literature.
Dr Matthew McFrederick
Matt McFrederick is a Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Reading, where he completed his PhD investigating the production histories of Samuel Beckett’s drama in London. The University of Reading is the home of the Samuel Beckett Research Centre, which includes the world-leading archive of Beckett material, where Matt co-curated the exhibition, Waiting for Godot at 60, to mark the anniversary of the first English language performance in 2015.
As we record this episode Matt is completing a book entitled Staging Beckett in London which will be published in 2025 by Methuen Drama.
Matt previously appeared on the podcast when we tackled Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Listen here: 003 Endgame by Samuel Beckett.
Matt recommended Please Right Back by theatre company 1927.
The Footnotes that accompany our episode on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot comprise thoughts on some of Beckett’s sources of inspiration for the play, on the theme of waiting, as well as a few interesting details about the first productions of the play.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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