"Waiting for Godot is, as the saying goes, a play in which nothing happens, twice. Two men, old acquaintances, spend a day waiting for someone named Godot a man? God? Absolution? Nothing? who never arrives. Instead, they encounter a strange, imperious man and his enslaved companion, then a boy who assures: tomorrow, Godot will come. The next day the same, almost."
"Samuel Beckett's modernist masterpiece, one of the most influential and widely performed plays in the English language, disorients the viewer by disassembling theater down to its essentials: performance and interpretation, which even the most seasoned Godot veterans are still debating. The play's nonsensical ramblings, existentialist themes and lack of clear meaning have absorbed the absurd realities of places ravaged by prolonged, costly waiting war-torn Sarajevo, post-Katrina New Orleans, or US prisons as well as Broadway, subject to increasingly ludicrous demands of celebrity, money and buzz."
Two shabby men, Estragon and Vladimir, spend repetitive days awaiting an absent figure called Godot who never arrives. They meet a domineering man and his subservient companion, and a boy who promises Godot will come tomorrow, underscoring cyclical expectation and delay. The play reduces theater to performance and interpretation, privileging dialogue, timing and actors over plot or clear meaning. Its nonsensical, existential themes have been mapped onto real-world contexts shaped by prolonged waiting, from war zones to disaster-struck cities and prisons, and onto commercial theater culture. Contemporary revivals emphasize minimalist staging and star casting to interrogate the text anew.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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