The Godot Company
51 The Cut
London SE1 8LP
020 7633 0599
info@godotcompany.com
One of the best-known plays of the twentieth century, and one of the most performed since its Paris premiere in 1953, Waiting for Godot was an immeadiate success when first performed at the Theatre de Babylone - saving the theatre from Bankruptcy. When Peter Hall's first English production came two years later at the Arts Theatre in London, Godot was found incomprehensible by all of the London Critics except Harold Hobson, who repeatedly championed the play in the Sunday Times until his colleagues changed their minds and the production transfered to a larger theatre.
With its sparse set, all-male cast and lack of love interest, Godot offers audiences potent and memorable quotations, reminding one of Hamlet's soliloquies. The play is set in the Vaucluse, where Beckett spent the war years hiding from the German army and the Gestapo, together with a Jewish painter, Henri Hayden. It echoes the pair's situation - never knowing what will menace them next while they wait for a change in their circumstances and the end of the war. Beckett has universalised that experience to ask the most basic questions about the purpose of life, the meaning of hope, the despair that comes with constant disappointment and the placebos we find to get us through another day in our lives.
There is much from the music hall in Godot - comedy, even song and dance. Clowns always have a tragic side to them. There is also humour, philosphy and great rhetoric: Pozzo's and Vladimir's great speeches summing up life's brevity and sadness and the suddenness of tragedy when it strikes - have come to epitomise Beckett's insight and wisdom and have lost none of their power over the last half century. Their is also a strong messge of hope in man's ability to overcome despair, find courage in relentlessly going 'On', and the offer of comfort through companionship.