Waiting for Godot

In Performance: 9th-16th February 2008

Godot.jpg (91683 bytes) BILL BRAY writes

Audiences of the arts do not expect to be severely challenged by the plays, concerts and painting exhibitions they attend. They have expectations before the event and if these are, in some way, not fulfilled there is discontent. Waiting For Godot met with some bewilderment in London at its first production in English by a young Peter Hall at the Arts Theatre in 1955.

But nothing as extreme as the affront to the audience in Rome in 1921 when Pirandello's Six Characters In Search Of An Author caused such an upset that audience, actors and critics fought on the stage. The audience arrives at the theatre, in their cosy bourgeois respectability, expecting the play to follow the accepted conventions of the time. Instead the curtain rises and the stage seems to have no designed representative setting, but a disorder of flats and stage junk. A rehearsal is in progress and as the characters arrive they are incomplete creatures of a dramatic moment.

The audience reacted violently. The uproar continued outside the theatre. Pirandello was followed to his home by a mob and the raucous discussion raged for hours. The play that had caused all the commotion was soon taken up by other theatres in Europe and in America. Within two years Six Characters had become an accepted play in the forefront of modern drama. It has been seen twice at the GWT - with no riots.

In music the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring, in Paris, caused a riot and in 1907 Picasso's cubist-influenced Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, an arrangement of nudes, some like African masks, caused outraged arguments and fights.

The critics battled verbally about Godot in 1955 but physical fighting did not follow the production and it transferred from the Arts to the Criterion Theatre for a run of several months. Since the original French version opened in Paris in January 1953 and since Beckett's own English version followed in August 1955 the play has been the subject of learned study and vigorous debate as to its meaning. This puzzled Beckett, as his intention was to state precisely

what it is about. He isn't primarily interested in narrative but in experience. The play does not discuss waiting but dramatises the process of waiting and has been performed worldwide in very telling productions. A performance in San Quentin prison was described by an inmate: "It was an expression, symbolic in order to avoid all personal error, by an author who expects each audience member to draw his own conclusions, make his own errors. It forced no dramatised moral on the viewer, it held out no specific hope."

Alec Reid, in an attempt to imagine a parallel contemporary situation, has likened it to passengers in a fog-bound airport with no control over the fog or the flights. Is it not much like our life which we fill with activities, jobs, hobbies, social activities, theatre visits, etc. passing the time until it ends at some unpredictable point? The characters tell stories, make up jokes, play games, do physical exercises, sing songs but these are stop-gaps, diversions in drawn-out time. It parallels the absurdity of our lives precisely. It must have been very like the waiting period endured by Sam and Suzanne Beckett during the war. They left Paris hurriedly to escape arrest after their resistance group had been betrayed by a Catholic priest who was a double agent. They lived like peasants in a village near Avignon in Vichy France and, as neutral Irish, waited a couple of years for the end of the war.

Since we received our Lottery grant in 1998 we have had a permanent celebration of Waiting For Godot at the GWT. The extension of the building was marked by the installation of the ceramic panels outside the theatre. A scene from the original London production of the play is worked into the theatre-themed artwork. Now, for the first time, Godot comes to our stage.

SUE HIGGINSON, director, writes

Waiting For Godot is a play that has both won awards and caused controversy. It is known and performed throughout the world. Its reputation alone will cause audiences either to rush to see it or to think to stay away. But it’s one of those plays which everyone should see at least once in their lifetime because it’s one of the most important plays of the modern era. It is as important to 20th Century drama as Shakespeare was to the 17th century.

In essence the play is very simple. There is a tree and a mound. This marks the rendez-vous point where two tramps are to meet with a Mr Godot. They pass the time talking, arguing and playing games while they wait. Two other characters pass by, but still Mr Godot does not come. Finally, a boy arrives to tell them that Mr Godot won’t be coming today but that he will come tomorrow. The next day, they wait again.

It’s not the lack of plot or action which sets Godot apart from other plays; it is the richness yet simplicity of the language, which has a poetic quality to it. The conversations and exchanges create a blend of humour and tragic insight to which every audience member, regardless of age or background, should be able to relate. It’s those qualities which have allowed it to acquire special resonance the world over.

I cannot emphasise enough that Waiting For Godot sets out to be a play not a work of literature. It is meant to be performed and it is meant to be watched by a live audience. As Beckett himself said "It means what it says". In fact, Beckett firmly resisted offers to film the play and refused permission for an adaptation featuring Peter O’Toole. He did allow a radio version to be made by the BBC and also a television version in 1961. However he was very unhappy with the television production and declared "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."

On stage, as a live performance, Godot makes enormous demands of the actors. They have to be of the best, and at their best, to extract the full poetic potential and mystery of the play. Our cast draws on the experience and talent of Phil Newton as Vladimir, Steve Hunt as Estragon, Paul Redfern as Lucky and Brian Kemp as Pozzo. We also welcome back two young members of the GWT Youth Theatre, Oliver Baldwin and William Webster, who will take the part of the Boy at alternate performances.

It is a play which will almost certainly have you talking as you leave the theatre. Quite what the critics Moon and Birdboot from The Real Inspector Hound would make of it, who knows?