Word: estragon
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...Estragon to Vladimir: I can't go on like this...
Vladimir to Estragon: That's what you think...
...called it En Attendant (Waiting, later Waiting for Godot), and it was just the jolt of negative energy that a somnolent postwar theater needed. Vladimir and Estragon, two tramplike figures in a blank landscape, pass the time in Act I "blathering about nothing in particular," as Estragon notes, while awaiting the arrival of the never-to-arrive Godot. They spend Act II doing the same thing. As one critic said, "Nothing happens, twice...
Godot might have been obscure, but Beckett no longer was. Tout Paris swarmed to his play, and the theater world soon caught up. After a disastrous U.S. premiere in Miami, Godot had a respectable Broadway run with E.G. Marshall as Vladimir and Bert Lahr as Estragon. Other beguiling star tandems never quite materialized: Alec Guinness and Ralph Richardson in London; Buster Keaton and Marlon Brando on Broadway. In the '60s, Steve McQueen wanted to star in a Godot film. Beckett declined...
...political allegiance was with Saddam Hussein, being hugged by Bill Clinton? Yitzhak Rabin, who as Minister of Defense six years ago initiated Israel's hard-line response to the Intifadah, shaking Arafat's hand? It all seemed a bit unreal, as if Godot had suddenly appeared to Vladimir and Estragon...