by Sonya Friedman
“All creativity consists in making something out of nothing.” Racine
I wondered why I’ve seen Waiting for Godot so very many times. Then some research told me why. It’s been called “the most significant play of the 20th century,” and is one of the most performed plays in the world, staged in almost every country. It has had a multi-racial cast, an all-Black cast, an Asian cast, one with the characters fragmented into ten players, and productions by prisoners (which intensely moved Beckett). The only cast that Beckett had firmly ruled against was one in which the players would be women. “Women don’t have prostates,” he said, referring to Vladimir who often leaves the stage to urinate. (In 1969, a Brazilian actress who played Estragon had a stroke onstage, and died.)
Beckett was also against his play airing on TV, unhappy with the one BBC-TV production. “My play wasn’t written for this box. My play was written for small men locked in a big space. Here you’re all too big for the place.”
Waiting for Godot is a play in which nothing happens, yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, the second act is where nothing happens, twice.
Two bedraggled acquaintances, Vladimir and Estragon, meet on a bare stage with only a leafless tree and a large stone. They discuss things of no apparent significance until we finally learn they are waiting for a man named Godot – uncertain as to whether he will ever arrive. After a while, a tyrant named Pozzo enters, on his way to sell his mute slave, Lucky. Later, a boy shows up, explaining that Godot will not arrive tonight, but surely tomorrow. Vladimir and Estragon then decide they will leave, but remain onstage, motionless.
In the second act, the two are again waiting for Godot by the tree which has now (mysteriously) sprouted some leaves. Pozzo re-enters, but he is now blind and helpless, and Lucky – a mute – in a sudden frenzy, spouts a torrent of meaningless words. They exit, and the boy reappears to say Godot will not be coming that day. The boy denies he has ever met Vladimir and Estragon, and that he is not the same boy they claim to have met the previous day. The two men rage at the child, who runs off in fear. Then they consider suicide, but lack a rope. They decide to return the next day with a rope, but remain motionless as the play ends.
The only thing Beckett says he was sure of about the men is” that they’re wearing bowlers.” The bowler hat had been de rigueur for many men when Beckett was growing up in Ireland. And the bowlers and other comic aspects remind us of Laurel and Hardy – who often played tramps and had a hat-passing game as in all productions of “Godot.” As to their rags, when Vladimir tells his companion he should have been a poet, Estragon says he was, and points to his rags as proof. Referring to their “blather,” Beckett introduced Irish idioms to firmly identify their nationality. In Britain, Godot is almost always played with Irish accents.
I first saw Godot in 1956 on Broadway with Bert Lahr (whom I lovingly remembered as the cowardly lion in “The Wizard of Oz”) as Estragon, E.G. Marshall as Vladimir, Kurt Kasznar as Pozzo, and Alvin Epstein as Lucky. What a cast. But I only remember Lahr being hilarious. I didn’t make sense of the play and didn’t need to; I enjoyed it without second, serious thoughts.
In 1988, I saw an all-star cast* at Lincoln Center, the hardest ticket in NYC. Well, this time I was blown away by the performers and the play. I was viscerally moved by these stranded, helpless, bewildered characters who – half comic, half tragic – keep staggering along without knowing why.
Estrogen: I can’t go on like this.
Vladimir: That’s what you think.
Later, sometime in Dublin, I saw the most vaudevillian performance, with constant bowler hat-passing and comic moves. Here, “Godot” was pronounced “GODot” throughout. (Beckett had flatly denied he had been thinking of God in the play.)
In 2013, at the Cort Theater, Ian McKellen mistook Estragon for a Chekhov character and Patrick Stewart played Vladimir as Hamlet.**
Left me cold.
The last time – and one of the best – was in 2023 in Brooklyn with Paul Parks (Estragon), and Michael Shannon (Vladmir) giving touching, moving portrayals while also being very funny. (Directed, by the way, by Arin Arbus, a woman. ) Now I found the play pertinent and puzzling, all at once. Just as it was meant to be.
*Robin Williams (Estragon), Steve Martin (Vladimir), F. Murray Abraham (Pozzo) and Bill Irwin (a famous mime) as Lucky, directed by Mike Nichols.
**Billy Crudup was Lucky and Shuler Hensley was Pozzo.
Sonya Friedman: As a writer/translator, I created subtitles for foreign films, mostly Italian (Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini). Then I segued into creating “supertitles” for opera productions across the country, including for the Metropolitan Opera. As a documentary filmmaker, I was an Oscar nominee.