Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot (1956). Samuel Beckett's absurdist “tragicomedy” told of two seedy men who joke, complain, and consider suicide while waiting for a blurry figure they called Godot. When he fails to appear they decide to leave, but stand perfectly still. This baffling play had its New York premiere at the John Golden Theatre in 1956 and enjoyed one of the longest runs (fifty‐nine performances) of any work of the theatre of the absurd, thanks in large measure to remarkable acting by Bert Lahr and E. G. Marshall. Lahr's performance was all the more remarkable in that he is reputed never to have understood a word he was speaking, but he had lots of company across the footlights. Often revived across America, Waiting for Godot enjoyed a nine‐month run in an Off Broadway revival in 1971 and a star‐studded, limited‐run mounting at Lincoln Center in 1988 was a hot ticket.

Waiting for Godot (published in French as En attendant Godot, 1952; in English, 1954; first performed in Paris, 1953, and in London and Dublin, 1955), a play by Samuel Beckett in which—according to Vivian Mercier's well-known summary—nothing happens, twice. While waiting on a country road for the mysterious Godot, Vladimir and Estragon divert themselves with conversational sallies that parody ideas of philosophy, poetry, and theatre. The tyrannical Pozzo arrives with Lucky, an abject slave tethered by a neck-rope. A boy arrives to tell the pair that Godot will not be coming till the next day. In the second act they fend off despair and suicide in the same manner. The play caused a sensation at its first performance at the Théâtre Babylone, Paris.