Waiting for Godot

Plot

Act I

The play opens with two bedraggled acquaintances, Vladimir and Estragon, meeting by a leafless tree. Estragon notifies Vladimir of his most recent troubles: he spent the previous night lying in a ditch and received a beating from a number of anonymous assailants. The duo discuss various matters at length, none of any apparent significance, and it is finally revealed that they are awaiting a man named Godot. They are not certain if they have ever met Godot, nor if he will even arrive.

Subsequently, an imperious traveller named Pozzo, along with his silent slave Lucky, arrives and pauses to converse with Vladimir and Estragon. Lucky is bound by a rope held by Pozzo, who forces Lucky to carry his heavy bags and physically punishes him if he deems Lucky's movements too lethargic. Pozzo says he is on the way to the market, at which he intends to sell Lucky for profit. Following Pozzo's command "Think!", the otherwise mute Lucky performs a sudden dance and monologue: a torrent of academic-sounding nonsensical phrases, albeit carefully constructed to deliver "poetic rationality". Lucky's speech seems to cryptically reference the play's absurdist themes. Pozzo and Lucky depart, leaving the bewildered Estragon and Vladimir to continue their wait for the absent Godot.

Eventually, a boy arrives and tells Vladimir and Estragon that he is a messenger from Godot, and that Godot will not be arriving tonight, but surely tomorrow. Vladimir asks for descriptions of Godot, receiving only extremely brief or vague answers from the boy, who soon exits. Vladimir and Estragon then announce that they will also leave, but they remain onstage without moving.

Act II

Vladimir and Estragon are again waiting near the tree, which has grown several leaves since Act 1. They are still awaiting Godot. Lucky and Pozzo eventually reappear, but not as they were previously. Pozzo has become blind and Lucky is now fully mute. Pozzo cannot recall having met Vladimir and Estragon, who themselves cannot agree on when they last saw the travellers. Lucky and Pozzo exit shortly after their spirited encounter, leaving Vladimir and Estragon to go on waiting.

Soon after, the boy reappears to again report that Godot will not be coming tonight, but surely tomorrow. The boy says he has not met Vladimir and Estragon before and is not the same boy who spoke to Vladimir yesterday, which causes Vladimir to burst into a rage at the child, demanding that the boy remember him the next day so as to avoid repeating this encounter once more. After the boy exits, Vladimir and Estragon consider suicide, but they do not have a rope with which to hang themselves. They decide to leave and return the day after with a rope, but again they merely remain motionless as the scene fades to black.

Characters

Beckett refrained from elaborating on the characters beyond what he had written in the play. He once recalled that when Sir Ralph Richardson "wanted the low-down on Pozzo, his home address and curriculum vitae, and seemed to make the forthcoming of this and similar information the condition of his condescending to illustrate the part of Vladimir ... I told him that all I knew about Pozzo was in the text, that if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true also of the other characters."

Vladimir and Estragon

Appearance

When Beckett started writing he did not have a visual image of Vladimir and Estragon. They are never referred to as tramps in the text, though they are often performed in tramps' costumes. Roger Blin said: "Beckett heard their voices, but he couldn't describe his characters to me. [He said]: 'The only thing I'm sure of is that they're wearing bowlers.'" "The bowler hat was of course de rigueur for men in many social contexts when Beckett was growing up in Foxrock, and [his father] William Beckett commonly wore one." The play does indicate that the clothes worn at least by Estragon are shabby. When told by Vladimir that he should have been a poet, Estragon says he was, gestures to his rags, and asks if it is not obvious.

There are no physical descriptions of either character, but the text indicates that Vladimir is the heavier of the pair: the contemplation-of-suicide scene tells us that. The bowlers and other broadly comic aspects of their personae have reminded modern audiences of Laurel and Hardy, who occasionally played tramps in their films. In The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. Gerald Mast wrote, "The hat-passing game in Waiting for Godot and Lucky's inability to think without his hat on are two obvious Beckett derivations from Laurel and Hardy – a substitution of form for essence, covering for reality". Their "blather", which includes Hiberno-English idioms, indicates that they are Irish.

Physicality and beliefs

Vladimir stands through most of the play, while Estragon sits numerous times and even dozes off. "Estragon is inert and Vladimir restless." Vladimir looks at the sky and muses on religious or philosophical matters. Estragon "belongs to the stone", preoccupied with mundane things such as what he can get to eat and how to ease his physical aches and pains; he is direct, intuitive. The monotonous, ritualistic means by which Estragon continuously sits upon the stone may be likened to Winnie's constant nail filing in Beckett's play Happy Days; both actions can be seen as representing the slow, deliberate erosion of the characters' lives. Estragon finds it hard to remember but can recall certain things when prompted, e.g., when Vladimir asks: "Do you remember the Gospels?" Estragon tells Vladimir about the coloured maps of the Holy Land and that he planned to honeymoon by the Dead Sea; it is his short-term memory that is poorest and suggests that he may in fact have dementia. Al Alvarez writes: "But perhaps Estragon's forgetfulness is the cement binding their relationship together. He continually forgets, Vladimir continually reminds him; between them they pass the time." Estragon's forgetfulness also affords Beckett a certain narrative utility, allowing his mundane, empty conversations with Vladimir to continue seamlessly. They have been together for fifty years but when asked by Pozzo they do not reveal their actual ages. Vladimir's life is not without its discomforts too but he is the more resilient of the pair. "Vladimir's pain is primarily mental anguish, which would thus account for his voluntary exchange of his hat for Lucky's, thus signifying Vladimir's symbolic desire for another person's thoughts." To some, these characterizations represent the act of thinking or mental state (Vladimir) and physical things or the body (Estragon). This is depicted by Vladimir's continuous attention to his hat and Estragon's to his boots. The two characters are temperamentally opposite, but are both essential: Vladimir's metaphysical musings are balanced by Estragon's physical demands.

Pozzo and Lucky

Characterisation

Pozzo and Lucky have been together for 60 years. Pozzo controls Lucky by means of an extremely long rope, which he jerks and tugs if Lucky is the least bit slow.

Lucky appears to be the subservient member of their relationship, at least initially, carrying out every task that Pozzo bids him to do without question, portraying a form of "dog-like devotion" to his master. He struggles with a heavy suitcase, falling on a number of occasions, only to be helped and held up by Estragon and Vladimir.

It has been contended that "Pozzo and Lucky are simply Didi and Gogo writ large", unbalanced as their relationship is. However, Pozzo's dominance is superficial; "upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that Lucky always possessed more influence in the relationship, for he danced, and more importantly, thought – not as a service, but in order to fill a vacant need of Pozzo: he committed all of these acts for Pozzo. As such, since the first appearance of the duo, the true slave had always been Pozzo." Pozzo credits Lucky with having given him all the culture, refinement, and ability to reason that he possesses. His rhetoric has been learned by rote. Pozzo's "party piece" on the sky is a clear example: as his memory crumbles, he finds himself unable to continue under his own steam.

Emphasis of contrasts

Little is learned about Pozzo besides the fact that he is on his way to the fair to sell his slave, Lucky. From Beckett's own life experiences in Ireland and wartime France, commentators such as Hugh Kenner have identified Pozzo as representing German behaviour in occupied France, or alternatively as a bullying and conceited Protestant Ascendancy landlord. When translating his original French dialogue into English, Beckett took pains to introduce Irish idiom (specifically, Dubliners' idiom): Pozzo's pipe is made by Kapp and Peterson, Dublin's best-known tobacconists (which he refers to as a "briar" but which Estragon calls by the dialect word dudeen). Not only is his Hiberno-English text more colourful than the French original, but it emphasizes the differences in the characters' social standing. Pozzo confesses to a poor memory but it is more a result of an abiding self-absorption. "Pozzo is a character who has to overcompensate. That's why he overdoes things ... and his overcompensation has to do with a deep insecurity in him. These were things Beckett said, psychological terms he used." Beckett's advice to the American director Alan Schneider was: "[Pozzo] is a hypomaniac and the only way to play him is to play him mad."

The Boy

The cast list specifies only one boy.

The boy in Act I, a local lad, assures Vladimir that this is the first time he has seen him. He says he was not there the previous day. He confirms he works for Mr. Godot as a goatherd. His brother, whom Godot beats, is a shepherd. Godot feeds both of them and allows them to sleep in his hayloft.

The boy in Act II also assures Vladimir that it was not he who called upon them the day before. He insists that this too is his first visit. When Vladimir asks what Godot does, the boy tells him, "He does nothing, sir." We also learn he has a white beard – possibly, the boy is not certain. This boy also has a brother who it seems is sick but there is no clear evidence to suggest that his brother is the boy who came in Act I or the one who came the day before that.

Whether the boy from Act I is the same boy from Act II or not, both boys are polite yet timid. In the first act, the boy, despite claiming to have arrived while Pozzo and Lucky are still about, does not announce himself until after Pozzo and Lucky leave, saying to Vladimir and Estragon that he waited for the other two to leave out of fear of the two men and of Pozzo's whip; the boy does not claim to arrive early enough in Act II to see either Lucky or Pozzo. In both acts, the boy seems hesitant to speak very much, saying mostly "Yes Sir" or "No Sir", and winds up exiting by running away.

Godot

The identity of Godot has been the subject of much debate. "When Colin Duckworth asked Beckett point-blank whether Pozzo was Godot, the author replied: 'No. It is just implied in the text, but it's not true.'"

Possible inspirations

Deirdre Bair says that though "Beckett will never discuss the implications of the title", she suggests two stories that both may have at least partially inspired it. The first is that because feet are a recurring theme in the play, Beckett has said the title was suggested to him by the slang French term for boot: "godillot, godasse". The second story, according to Bair, is that Beckett once encountered a group of spectators at the French Tour de France bicycle race, who told him "Nous attendons Godot" – they were waiting for a competitor whose name was Godot.

"Beckett said to Peter Woodthorpe that he regretted calling the absent character 'Godot', because of all the theories involving God to which this had given rise." "I also told [Ralph] Richardson that if by Godot I had meant God I would [have] said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly." That said, Beckett did once concede, "It would be fatuous of me to pretend that I am not aware of the meanings attached to the word 'Godot', and the opinion of many that it means 'God'. But you must remember – I wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it." (Note: the French word for 'God' is 'Dieu'.) However, "Beckett has often stressed the strong unconscious impulses that partly control his writing; he has even spoken of being 'in a trance' when he writes." While Beckett stated he originally had no knowledge of Balzac's play Mercadet ou le faiseur, whose character Godeau has an identical-sounding name and is involved in a similar situation, it has been suggested he may have been instead influenced by The Lovable Cheat, a minor adaptation of Mercadet featuring Buster Keaton, whose works Beckett had admired, and whom he later sought out for Film.

Unlike elsewhere in Beckett's work, no bicycle appears in this play, but Hugh Kenner in his essay "The Cartesian Centaur" reports that Beckett once, when asked about the meaning of Godot, mentioned "a veteran racing cyclist, bald, a 'stayer', recurrent placeman in town-to-town and national championships, Christian name elusive, surname Godeau, pronounced, of course, no differently from Godot." Waiting for Godot is clearly not about track cycling, but it is said that Beckett himself did wait for French cyclist Roger Godeau (1920–2000; a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961), outside the velodrome in Roubaix.

Setting

There is only one scene throughout both acts. Two men are waiting on a country road by a tree. The men are of unspecified origin, though it is clear that they are not English by nationality since they refer to currency as francs, and tell derisive jokes about the English – and in English-language productions the pair are traditionally played with Irish accents. The script calls for Estragon to sit on a low mound but in practice – as in Beckett's own 1975 German production – this is usually a stone. In the first act the tree is bare. In the second, a few leaves have appeared despite the script specifying that it is the next day. The minimal description calls to mind "the idea of the lieu vague, a location which should not be particularised".

Other clues about the location can be found in the dialogue. In Act I, Vladimir turns toward the auditorium and describes it as a bog. In Act II, Vladimir again motions to the auditorium and notes that there is "Not a soul in sight." When Estragon rushes toward the back of the stage in Act II, Vladimir scolds him, saying that "There's no way out there." Also in Act II, Vladimir comments that their surroundings look nothing like the Macon country, and Estragon states that he's lived his whole life "Here! In the Cackon country!"

Alan Schneider once suggested putting the play on in the round – Pozzo has been described as a ringmaster – but Beckett dissuaded him: "I don't in my ignorance agree with the round and feel Godot needs a very closed box." He even contemplated at one point having a "faint shadow of bars on stage floor" but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called "explicitation". In Beckett's 1975 Schiller Theater production in Berlin, there are times when Didi and Gogo appear to bounce off something "like birds trapped in the strands of [an invisible] net", in James Knowlson's description.

Interpretations

"Because the play is so stripped down, so elemental, it invites all kinds of social and political and religious interpretation", wrote Normand Berlin in a tribute to the play in autumn 1999, "with Beckett himself placed in different schools of thought, different movements and 'isms'. The attempts to pin him down have not been successful, but the desire to do so is natural when we encounter a writer whose minimalist art reaches for bedrock reality. 'Less' forces us to look for 'more', and the need to talk about Godot and about Beckett has resulted in a steady outpouring of books and articles."

Throughout Waiting for Godot, the audience may encounter religious, philosophical, classical, psychoanalytical and biographical – especially wartime – references. There are ritualistic aspects and elements taken directly from vaudeville, and there is a danger in making more of these than what they are: that is, merely structural conveniences, avatars into which the writer places his fictional characters. The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos." Beckett makes this point emphatically in the opening notes to Film: "No truth value attaches to the above, regarded as of merely structural and dramatic convenience." He told critic Lawrence E. Harvey that his "work does not depend on experience – [it is] not a record of experience. Of course you use it."

Beckett tired quickly of "the endless misunderstanding". As far back as 1955, he remarked, "Why people have to complicate a thing so simple I can't make out." He was not forthcoming with anything more than cryptic clues: "Peter Woodthorpe [who played Estragon] remembered asking him one day in a taxi what the play was really about: 'It's all symbiosis, Peter; it's symbiosis,' answered Beckett."

Beckett directed the play for the Schiller-Theater in Berlin in 1975. Although he had overseen many productions, this was the first time that he had taken complete control. Walter Asmus was his conscientious young assistant director. The production was not naturalistic. Beckett explained:

It is a game, everything is a game. When all four of them are lying on the ground, that cannot be handled naturalistically. That has got to be done artificially, balletically. Otherwise everything becomes an imitation, an imitation of reality [...] It should become clear and transparent, not dry. It is a game in order to survive.

Political

"It was seen as an allegory of the Cold War" or of French Resistance to the Germans. Graham Hassell writes, "the intrusion of Pozzo and Lucky [...] seems like nothing more than a metaphor for Ireland's view of mainland Britain, where society has ever been blighted by a greedy ruling élite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means."

The play was written shortly after the end of World War II, during which Beckett and his partner were forced to flee occupied Paris to avoid arrest, owing to their affiliation with the French Resistance. After the war, Beckett volunteered for the Red Cross in Saint-Lô, which had been almost completely destroyed during the D-Day fighting. These experiences likely had a severe effect on both Beckett's politics and his views on the prevailing policies of the period. Some academics have theorized that Godot is set during World War II, with Estragon and Vladimir two Jews waiting for Godot to smuggle them out of occupied France.

Psychological

"Bernard Dukore develops a triadic theory in Didi, Gogo and the absent Godot, based on Sigmund Freud's trinitarian description of the psyche in The Ego and the Id (1923) and the usage of onomastic techniques. Dukore defines the characters by what they lack: the rational Go-go embodies the incomplete ego, the missing pleasure principle: (e)go-(e)go. Di-di (id-id) – who is more instinctual and irrational – is seen as the backward id or subversion of the rational principle. Godot fulfills the function of the superego or moral standards. Pozzo and Lucky are just re-iterations of the main protagonists. Dukore finally sees Beckett's play as a metaphor for the futility of man's existence when salvation is expected from an external entity, and the self is denied introspection."

"The four archetypal personalities or the four aspects of the soul are grouped in two pairs: the ego and the shadow, the persona and the soul's image (animus or anima). The shadow is the container of all our despised emotions repressed by the ego. Lucky, the shadow, serves as the polar opposite of the egocentric Pozzo, prototype of prosperous mediocrity, who incessantly controls and persecutes his subordinate, thus symbolising the oppression of the unconscious shadow by the despotic ego. Lucky's monologue in Act I appears as a manifestation of a stream of repressed unconsciousness, as he is allowed to 'think' for his master. Estragon's name has another connotation, besides that of the aromatic herb, tarragon: "estragon" sounds similar to estrogen, the female hormone (Carter, 130). This prompts us to identify him with the anima, the feminine image of Vladimir's soul. It explains Estragon's propensity for poetry, his sensitivity and dreams, his irrational moods. Vladimir appears as the complementary masculine principle, or perhaps the rational persona of the contemplative type."

Philosophical

Broadly speaking, existentialists hold that everyone must come to terms with certain fundamental questions if they are to take their subjective existences seriously and with intrinsic value—questions such as life, death, the meaning of human existence and the place of God in that existence. By and large, the theories of existentialism assert that conscious reality is very complex and without an "objective" or universally known value: the individual must create value by affirming it and living it, not by simply talking about it or philosophising it in the mind. The play may be seen to touch on all these issues.

Martin Esslin, in his The Theatre of the Absurd (1960), argued that Waiting for Godot was part of a broader literary movement he called the Theatre of the Absurd, a form of theatre that stemmed from the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus. Absurdism itself is a branch of existentialism, pioneered by Søren Kierkegaard, and posits that, while inherent meaning might exist, human beings are incapable of finding it due to some form of mental or philosophical limitation. Thus, humanity is doomed to be faced with the Absurd, or the absolute absurdity of the existence in lack of intrinsic purpose.

Just after Didi and Gogo have been particularly selfish and callous, the boy comes to say that Godot is not coming. The boy (or pair of boys) may be seen to represent meekness and hope before compassion is consciously excluded by an evolving personality and character, in which case they may be the youthful Pozzo and Lucky. Thus Godot is compassion and fails to arrive every day, as he says he will. No-one is concerned that a boy is beaten. In this interpretation, there is the irony that only by changing their hearts to be compassionate can the characters fixed to the tree move on and cease to have to wait for Godot.

Christian

Much of the play is steeped in scriptural allusion. The boy from Act I mentions that he and his brother mind Godot's sheep and goats. Much can be read into Beckett's inclusion of the story of the two thieves from Luke 23:39–43 and the ensuing discussion of repentance. It is easy to see the tree as the Christian cross or the tree of life. Some see God and Godot as one and the same. Vladimir's "Christ have mercy upon us!" could be taken as evidence that at least he believes so.

Another, perhaps less conspicuous, potentially religious element is Pozzo's bout with blindness, during which he comes to resemble the biblical figure of Bartimaeus ('The Blind Beggar').

This reading is given further weight early in the first act when Estragon asks Vladimir what he has requested from Godot:

Vladimir: Oh ... nothing very definite.Estragon: A kind of prayer.Vladimir: Precisely.Estragon: A vague supplication.Vladimir: Exactly.

Other explicit Christian elements include repentance, the Gospels, a Saviour, human beings made in God's image, the cross, and Cain and Abel.

According to biographer Anthony Cronin, Beckett "always possessed a Bible, at the end more than one edition, and Bible concordances were always among the reference books on his shelves." Beckett said: "Christianity is a mythology with which I am perfectly familiar so I naturally use it." Cronin argues the biblical references "may be ironic or even sarcastic".

"In answer to a defence counsel question in 1937 (during the libel action brought by his uncle against Oliver St. John Gogarty) as to whether he was a Christian, Jew or atheist, Beckett replied, 'None of the three'". Mary Bryden wrote, "the hypothesised God who emerges from Beckett's texts is one who is both cursed for his perverse absence and cursed for his surveillant presence. He is by turns dismissed, satirised, or ignored, but he, and his tortured son, are never definitively discarded."

Autobiographical

Waiting for Godot has been described as a "metaphor for the long walk into Roussillon, when Beckett and Suzanne slept in haystacks ... during the day and walked by night ... [or] of the relationship of Beckett to Joyce". Beckett told Ruby Cohn that Caspar David Friedrich's painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon, which he saw on his journey to Germany in 1936, was the source for the play.

Sexual

Though the sexuality of Vladimir and Estragon is not always considered by critics, some see the two vagabonds as an ageing homosexual couple, who are worn out, with broken spirits, impotent and not engaging sexually any longer. The two appear to be written as a parody of a married couple. Peter Boxall points out that the play features two characters who seem to have shared life together for years; they quarrel, embrace, and are mutually dependent. Beckett was interviewed at the time the play was premiering in New York, and, speaking of his writings and characters in general, Beckett said "I'm working with impotence, ignorance. I don't think impotence has been exploited in the past."

Pozzo and his slave, Lucky, arrive on the scene. Pozzo is a stout man, who wields a whip and holds a rope around Lucky's neck. Some critics have considered that the relationship of these two characters is homosexual and sado-masochistic in nature. Lucky's long speech is a torrent of broken ideas and speculations regarding man, sex, God, and time. It has been said that the play contains little or no sexual hope, this being the play's lament, and the source of the play's humour and comedic tenderness. Norman Mailer wonders if Beckett might be restating the sexual and moral basis of Christianity, that life and strength is found in an adoration of those in the lower depths where God is concealed.

Beckett's objection to the casting of female actors

Beckett was not open to most interpretative approaches to his work. He famously objected when, in the 1980s, several women's acting companies began to stage the play. "Women don't have prostates", said Beckett, a reference to the fact that Vladimir frequently has to leave the stage to urinate. Florian Illies speculates that Beckett's objection to the casting of women originates in the painting Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon by Caspar David Friedrich: Friedrich's companion piece Two Men Contemplating the Moon was the inspiration for Beckett's play, and apparently he was taken aback when, only later, did he learn that the painting was one of a complementary pair, where the other work's subjects were a man and a woman.

In 1988 a Dutch theatre company, De Haarlemse Toneelschuur, put on a production directed by Matin Van Veldhuizen with all female actors, using a French-to-Dutch translation by Jacoba Van Velde. Beckett brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against the theatre company. "The issue of gender seemed to him to be so vital a distinction for a playwright to make that he reacted angrily, instituting a ban on all productions of his plays in The Netherlands." This ban was short-lived, however.

In 1991 (two years after Beckett's death), a French judge ruled that productions with female casts would not cause excessive damage to Beckett's legacy, and allowed the play to be performed by the all-female cast of the Brut de Beton theater company at the Avignon Festival, although an objection by Beckett's representative had to be read before each performance.

Similarly, an injunction was issued against a theatre in Pontedera, Tuscany, by lawyers for Samuel Beckett's estate who did not want female actors to play Vladimir and Estragon in the play, but in 2006 a court in Rome ruled that the women could play the roles.

At the 1995 Acco Festival, director Nola Chilton staged a production with Daniella Michaeli in the role of Lucky. In 2021, São João National Theatre in Porto, Portugal, staged a version with Maria Leite as Lucky.

The topic of Beckett and his estate preventing female productions of the play is explored in the play Godot Is a Woman, which was staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023 by the theatre company Silent Faces.

Production history

1950s to 1969

"[O]n 17 February 1952 ... an abridged version of the play was performed in the studio of the Club d'Essai de la Radio and was broadcast on [French] radio ... [A]lthough he sent a polite note that Roger Blin read out, Beckett himself did not turn up." Part of his introduction reads:

I don't know who Godot is. I don't even know (above all don't know) if he exists. And I don't know if they believe in him or not – those two who are waiting for him. The other two who pass by towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony. All I knew I showed. It's not much, but it's enough for me, by a wide margin. I'll even say that I would have been satisfied with less. As for wanting to find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance, along with the program and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it. But it must be possible ... Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, their time and their space, I was able to know them a little, but far from the need to understand. Maybe they owe you explanations. Let them supply it. Without me. They and I are through with each other.

The play was first published in September 1952 by Les Éditions de Minuit and released on 17 October 1952 in advance of the first full theatrical performance; only 2500 copies were printed of this first edition. On 4 January 1953, "[t]hirty reviewers came to the générale of En attendant Godot before the public opening ... Contrary to later legend, the reviewers were kind ... Some dozen reviews in daily newspapers range[d] from tolerant to enthusiastic ... Reviews in the weeklies [were] longer and more fervent; moreover, they appeared in time to lure spectators to that first thirty-day run" which began on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. Early public performances were not, however, without incident: during one performance "the curtain had to be brought down after Lucky's monologue as twenty, well-dressed, but disgruntled spectators whistled and hooted derisively ... One of the protesters [even] wrote a vituperative letter dated 2 February 1953 to Le Monde."

The cast comprised Pierre Latour (Estragon), Lucien Raimbourg (Vladimir), Jean Martin (Lucky) and Roger Blin (Pozzo). The actor due to play Pozzo found a more remunerative role and so the director – a shy, lean man in real life – had to step in and play the stout bombaster himself with a pillow amplifying his stomach. Both boys were played by Serge Lecointe. The entire production was done on the thinnest of shoestring budgets; the large battered valise that Martin carried "was found among the city's refuse by the husband of the theatre dresser on his rounds as he worked clearing the dustbins", for example. Blin helped the actors embody their characters by asking them to determine a physical malady that would contribute to the nature of their character. Latour emphasized Estragon's bad feet and Raimbourg Vladimir's prostate problems, while Blin played Pozzo as a man with heart difficulties. Martin played Lucky with the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

1970s to 2000

In 1977, PBS broadcast an adaptation for television directed by Charles S. Dubin and performed by the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre, with Dana Elcar as Vladimir, Donald Moffat as Estragon, Ralph Waite as Pozzo and Bruce French as Lucky.

On 4 September 1977, as part of the British television series Drama, the Open University filmed a production of Godot directed by Richard Callanan with Leo McKern as Estragon, Max Wall as Vladimir, Graham Crowden as Pozzo, Basil Clarke as Lucky and Toby Page as The Boy.

In 1978, a production was staged by Walter Asmus at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City with Sam Waterston as Vladimir, Austin Pendleton as Estragon, Milo O'Shea as Lucky and Michael Egan as Pozzo.

A young Geoffrey Rush played Vladimir opposite his then flatmate Mel Gibson as Estragon in 1979 at the Jane Street Theatre in Sydney.

In 1980, Braham Murray directed a production at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester with Max Wall as Vladimir, Trevor Peacock as Estragon and Wolfe Morris as Pozzo.

Also in 1980, a production was performed at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, directed by Donald Howarth, with John Kani ("Vladimir"), Winston Ntshona ("Estragon"), Pieter-Dirk Uys ("Pozzo"), Peter Piccolo ("Lucky") and Silamour Philander ("The Boy"). The multiracial cast, approved by Beckett himself, caused quite a stir, but the play received good reviews. After the Cape Town run, the play was also performed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, the Port Elizabeth Opera House, and the Market Theatre, Johannesburg (where it ran for three weeks). In 1981, the production went on an international tour to the US and Britain, with Bill Flynn replacing Uys as "Pozzo". The tour included New Haven, Connecticut, The Old Vic Theatre in London and the Oxford Playhouse in Oxford. It was also invited to participate in the First International Baltimore Theatre Festival but on arrival the play was picketed by anti-Apartheid demonstrators who claimed that it and the Baxter Theatre were "part and parcel of the South African propaganda machine to misrepresent what was taking place in the country", so the performances were canceled.

2000 to present

Neil Armfield directed a controversial production in January 2003 with Max Cullen as Estragon, John Gaden as Vladimir, Boddan Koca as Pozzo and Steve Le Marquand as Lucky at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre. A representative of Beckett's estate was present at opening night and had believed a contract for the play had stated that no music was to be used in the production.

On 16 April 2006, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a production directed by John Tydeman, with Sean Barrett as Vladimir, David Burke as Estragon, Nigel Anthony as Lucky and The Narrator, Terence Rigby as Pozzo and Zachary Fox as The Boy.

On 2 and 3 November 2007, two performances were staged in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, two years after the neighborhood had been devastated by the failure of the federal levee system caused by Hurricane Katrina. This was followed by two performances in the similarly damaged neighborhood Gentilly on 9 and 10 November. The production was staged by American artist Paul Chan, the NYC-based arts organization Creative Time, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem. It featured New Orleans native Wendell Pierce as Vladimir, J. Kyle Manzay as Estragon, Tony Felix and Michael Pepp as Boy. Waiting for Godot in New Orleans

On 30 April 2009, a production directed by Sean Mathias, with Sir Ian McKellen as Estragon and Sir Patrick Stewart as Vladimir, opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London's West End. Their performances received critical acclaim, and were the subject of an eight-part documentary series called Theatreland, which was produced by Sky Arts. The production was revived at the same theatre in January 2010 for 11 weeks and in 2010 toured internationally with Roger Rees replacing Stewart as Vladimir. This production toured to Adelaide, South Australia, in June 2010, playing at Her Majesty's.

A 2009 Broadway revival of the play starring Nathan Lane as Estragon, John Goodman as Pozzo, John Glover as Lucky and Bill Irwin as Vladimir was nominated for three Tony Awards: Best Revival of a Play, Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play (John Glover), and Best Costume Design of a Play (Jane Greenwood).

In 2012, a critically acclaimed production starred Alan Mandell, Barry McGovern, James Cromwell, and Hugo Armstrong at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, receiving five Ovation Awards, including best production of a play by a large theater and for actors Alan Mandell and Hugo Armstrong.

Adaptations

Beckett received numerous requests to adapt Waiting for Godot for film and television. The author, however, resisted these offers, except for occasional approval out of friendship or sympathy for the person making the request. This was the case when he agreed to some televised productions in his lifetime (including a 1961 American telecast with Zero Mostel as Estragon and Burgess Meredith as Vladimir that New York Times theatre critic Alvin Klein describes as having "left critics bewildered and is now a classic"). When Keep Films made Beckett an offer to film an adaptation in which Peter O'Toole would feature, Beckett tersely told his French publisher to advise them: "I do not want a film of Godot." The BBC broadcast a television production of Waiting for Godot on 26 June 1961 (see above), a version for radio having already been transmitted on 25 April 1960. Beckett watched the programme with a few close friends in Peter Woodthorpe's Chelsea flat. He was unhappy with what he saw. "My play", he said, "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." One analysis argued that Beckett's opposition to alterations and creative adaptations stem from his abiding concern with audience reaction rather than proprietary rights over a text being performed.

On the other hand, theatrical adaptations have had more success. For instance, Andre Engel adapted the play in 1979 and was produced in Strasbourg. In this performance, the two main characters were fragmented into 10 characters. The first four involved Gogo, Didi, Lucky, and Pozzo while the rest were divided into three pairs: two tramps, a pair of grim heterosexuals, and a bride raped by her groom. Each of these embodied some characteristics of Estragon and Vladimir. A similar approach was employed by Tamiya Kuriyama who directed his own adaptation of the play in Tokyo. These interpretations, which only used extracts from the dialogues of the original, focused on the minds of the urban-dwellers today, who are considered to be no longer individuals but one of the many or of the whole, which turned such individuals into machines.

In 1991, Chinese avant-garde theatre director Meng Jinghui (b. 1964) adapted the play (Dengdai Geduo in Chinese) for his master's graduation performance at Central Academy of Drama, with unmistakable allusions to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. By using metatheatrical tropes, Meng's adaptation not only condemned both the government and the protesters but expressed strong senses of disillusion and cynicism. Additionally, by dramatically changing the main characters and the ending—transforming the philosophical and sceptic Vladimir in the original script into a vengeful idealist-turned-cynic who strangled Godot to death, Meng captures the conflicted feelings of the Chinese generation born in the 1960s towards China's socialist past.

Place in Beckett's work

Although not his favourite among his plays, Waiting for Godot was the work which brought Beckett fame and financial stability and as such it always held a special place in his affections. "When the manuscript and rare books dealer, Henry Wenning, asked him if he could sell the original French manuscript for him, Beckett replied: 'Rightly or wrongly have decided not to let Godot go yet. Neither sentimental nor financial, probably peak of market now and never such an offer. Can't explain.'"

Related works

Racine's Bérénice is a play "in which nothing happens for five acts". In the preface to this play Racine writes: "All creativity consists in making something out of nothing." Beckett was an avid scholar of the 17th-century playwright and lectured on him during his time at Trinity. "Essential to the static quality of a Racine play is the pairing of characters to talk at length to each other."

The title character of Balzac's 1851 play Mercadet is waiting for financial salvation from his never-seen business partner, Godeau. Although Beckett was familiar with Balzac's prose, he insisted that he learned of the play after finishing Waiting for Godot.

Many critics, including Al Alvarez and Christopher Ricks, regard the protagonists in Beckett's novel Mercier and Camier as prototypes of Vladimir and Estragon. "If you want to find the origins of Godot", Beckett told Colin Duckworth once, "look at Murphy." Here we see the agonised protagonist yearning for self-knowledge, or at least complete freedom of thought at any cost, and the dichotomy and interaction of mind and body. Mercier and Camier wander aimlessly about a boggy, rain-soaked island that, although not explicitly named, is Beckett's native Ireland. They speak convoluted dialogues similar to Vladimir and Estragon's, joke about the weather and chat in pubs, while the purpose of their odyssey is never made clear. The waiting in Godot is the wandering of the novel. "There are large chunks of dialogue which he later transferred directly into Godot."

Waiting for Godot has been compared with Tom Stoppard's 1966 play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Parallels include two central characters who appear to be aspects of a single character and whose lives are dependent on outside forces over which they have little control. There are also plot parallels, the act of waiting as a significant element of the play, during the waiting, the characters pass time by playing Questions, impersonating other characters, at times repeatedly interrupting each other while at other times remaining silent for long periods.

The 1991 West End production (see above), inspired Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson to develop Bottom, which Mayall described as a "cruder cousin" to Godot.

Works inspired by Godot

An unauthorised sequel was written by Miodrag Bulatović in 1966: Godo je došao (Godot Arrived). It was translated from Serbian into German (Godot ist gekommen) and French. The playwright presents Godot as a baker who ends up being condemned to death by the four main characters. Since it turns out he is indestructible, Lucky declares him non-existent. Although Beckett was noted for disallowing productions that took even slight liberties with his plays, he let this pass without incident but not without comment. Ruby Cohn writes: "On the flyleaf of my edition of the Bulatović play, Beckett is quoted: 'I think that all that has nothing to do with me.'"

Alan Titley's Irish-language sequel Tagann Godot (Godot Arrives) was written for Oireachtas na Gaeilge in 1987 and produced as a radio play by RTÉ and on stage in 1990 at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin directed by Tómas Mac Anna.

In the late 1990s an unauthorised sequel was written by Daniel Curzon entitled Godot Arrives. Máirtín Coilféir finds similarities to Titley's work, of which Curzon was unaware.

A radical transformation was written by Bernard Pautrat, performed at Théâtre National de Strasbourg in 1979–1980: Ils allaient obscurs sous la nuit solitaire (d'après 'En attendant Godot' de Samuel Beckett) (They Went Dark Under the Lonely Night (based on 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett)). It features not four actors and the brief appearance of a fifth one (as in Beckett's play), but ten actors. Four of them bore the names of Gogo, Didi, Lucky and Pozzo. The dialogue, consisting of extensive quotations from the original, was distributed in segments among the ten actors, not necessarily following the order of the original."

Gujarati playwright Labhshankar Thakar, along with Subhash Shah, wrote a play Ek Undar ane Jadunath (A Rat and Jadunath) based on Godot in 1966.

In 2006, John Griffin wrote and produced a play titled Godot Has Left the Building, which serves as a modern-day homage to Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Set in a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with the remnants of modern technology, the play follows two men, Sebastian and Joe, as they struggle to find meaning in their desolate world. The play retains the absurdist themes of its predecessor, focusing on existential despair and the search for purpose in a seemingly indifferent universe. Unlike Waiting for Godot, which leaves many questions unanswered, Godot Has Left the Building is noted for its more direct confrontation with the futility of waiting and the inevitability of meaninglessness. The play received mixed reviews, with some critics praising its atmosphere and performances, while others criticized it for not offering the same depth as Beckett's original work.

In popular culture and media

In November/December 1987, Garry Trudeau ran a week-long spoof in his Doonesbury syndicated comic strip called "Waiting for Mario" in which two characters discussed – and dismissed – each other's hopes that Mario Cuomo would declare as a candidate in the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primaries.

In 1992 Sesame Street had a short video in their segment "Monsterpiece Theater" entitled "Waiting for Elmo". Telly and Grover wait by a bare tree for Elmo to appear. They discuss their situation: If Elmo arrives they would be "happy", if not they would be "angry". Elmo never appears, and the tree declares it does not understand the play before leaving, prompting Telly and Grover to chase after it.

The 1997 comedy film Waiting for Guffman concerns a small-town community theatre group in Missouri who put on a show hoping to attract the attention of prominent Broadway producer Mort Guffman, who never arrives.

In 1998 a short comedic sketch in episode 9 season 9 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured the two protagonist robots Crow and Tom Servo motionless and expressing they are waiting for "Gorgo" (the titular monster of the movie that was featured). It ends with Mike Nelson disguised as the monster and scaring them off.

The 2010 documentary film The Impossible Itself is about the 1953 Lüttringhausen and 1957 San Quentin Prison productions of Waiting for Godot.

A 2001 short film titled Pitch 'n' Putt with Beckett 'n' Joyce, parodies the play, with Beckett and James Joyce awaiting a never-seen W.B. Yeats at a miniature golf course.

In the 2004 video game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, a prosecutor going by the alias, Godot, is portrayed as mysterious after cutting all ties to his life before he went into a coma.

In the 2008 musical Ride The Cyclone by Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond, the character of Noel Gruber is shown in a flashback to perform an excerpt from Waiting for Godot during his school's nativity play, saying: "There is no room at this Inn, for it is Christmas... Shall we hang ourselves?" Noel's scene partner (portrayed by Jane Doe in the flashback) responds with: "I hear it gives you an erection." "Then we must hang ourselves... immediately" In the scene, the characters don bowler hats and speak in French accents, further cementing the reference.

Awards and nominations