Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the most famous play of the 20th century, has been famously described as a play in which nothing happens twice. Audiences at its London English-speaking premiere in 1955 used to storm out of the theatre, screaming abuse at the actors: “Rubbish!”, “It’s a disgrace!”, “Take it off!”, “Disgusting!”, “Balls!!”
“Why people have to complicate a thing so simple I can’t make out,” said Beckett.
The play has been able to support any number of interpretations, ranging from the utterly pretentious to the utterly banal. The bleakest production I ever saw was directed by Beckett himself in German. When the cast complained during rehearsal that it was all getting too slow and boring, Beckett’s response was merely to ask them to go even slower.
Estragon and Vladimir, two tramps, blather about nothing in particular. All they ask for is recognition that they exist. But Godot, though always promising to come tomorrow, never does. “Do not despair,” said Saint Augustine. “One of the thieves was saved.” But then he added a rider: “Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned.”
Nothing happens. Nobody comes. Nobody goes. It’s awful. “We can’t go on like this,” says Estragon. “That’s what you think,” retorts Vladimir. Two themes stand out: man’s inhumanity to man and God’s inhumanity to man.
“I’ve been better entertained.” The line gets the biggest laugh of the evening with the audience laughing at themselves for watching a play in which nothing happens twice on a bare stage whose only feature is a dead tree.
Waiting for Godot is a tragic comedy. James Macdonald’s production is neither comic nor tragic enough.
Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw play the inseparable tramps. Jonathan Slinger and Tom Edden play Pozzo and Lucky, a rich master and his poor slave, who are equally inseparable, tied to each other by a rope.
Edden is perfect, physically and facially, with his frightened eyes staring into space. His terrific delivery of Lucky’s very long, unstoppable gibberish monologue, which drives everybody up the wall, won him an instant round of applause.
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