Waiting for Godot

The final play I saw this past weekend was Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. This play is one of the fundamental plays which any English major… no, which any human being should read. Beckett is an Irish playwright who wrote his major works in French. One of his other more famous works was Endgame which I saw last December. Personally I think Endgame is better but Godot is the more famous or infamous of the two.

The plot revolves around two characters, Estragon and Vladimir as the wait by a tree for a man named Godot (who never shows up). Two other characters, Lucky and Pozzo show up. Pozzo is a fat, bulbous bald man who smokes a pipe and Lucky is a mute who carries Pozzo’s bags and wears a noose as a leash. Lucky only has one major monologue in the play but it is quite the speech which may or may not make perfect sense.
That is the point of the play. It is the absurdity of them waiting for a man who may not ever come, which may not even exist yet they still wait.

It is the quintessential existential question: why do something for your life for which there may be no reward? What is the point? All these questions are coalescing throughout the play. In fact, Estragon even asks why they don’t just leave at numerous points in the play.

This production stars Ian McKellen as Estragon. He is the biggest name in the production. He starred in the X Men movies as Magneto and, more famously, as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings series.

It was a phenomenal production with a fairly apocalyptic set. There was dust and broken planks of wood strewn throughout the stage. It was a fairly spectacularly visceral set. The play, despite being quite cynical and apocalyptic is also quite funny. It is tragic but it does it in such a light hearted way that it is easy to forget how heartbreaking the end really was. It is an absurd play but it is one which is quite funny.

I feel lucky as an English major to have been able to see both of Beckett’s quintessential works in such a short time period in London.

Afterwards I got dinner and caught my train back home.