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.
