Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play “Waiting for Godot” has often been credited as one of the most influential
English language plays of the 20th Century with a litany of interpretations
on meaning and intent whether religious,
existential or autobiographical.
The play in two Acts is focussed on two characters, Gogo and Didi (abbreviated from Estragon and Vladimir in the original Beckett version), who wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named
Godot. The tedium and monotony of their wait is interrupted for awhile by the
arrival of two other protagonists - Lucky, a baggage-burdened, nearly-silent
slave who has a rope tied around his neck and his aggressive and pompous
master, Pozzo. The entire content of the play is actually the musings and discourse
between these characters and little else.
Adapted by Andrew Upton for the Sydney Theatre Company’s
2013 season, the most tangible value of the play are the performances of Hugo Weaving
and Richard Roxburgh as the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon.
Upton has made changes to the dialogue and placed the two act play in an urban
setting of an alleyway rather than Beckett’s original setting in the
countryside. The STC production also identifies the two main characters as
tramps or down-and-outs whereas Beckett himself never provided such a biographical
description.
Essentially this is a play about nothing much at all as
the two main characters debate issues of little actual philosophical or existential
consequence in a haphazard sometimes circular manner without resolution or insight.
Beckett’s ultimate absurdist achievement has been to have critics and audiences debate and ponder this work whereas in
fact, ‘the emperor has no clothes’.
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