Word: estragon
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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When the curtain rises on Samuel Beckett's play it reveals a stage bare of everything but a few shapes vaguely suggestive of rocks and something that resembles a tree. Soon two hobos named Estragon and Vladimir come onstage, and the audience learns that they are waiting for someone called Godot to meet them there. The pair talk for a while, and than they are joined by two other characters, a cruel slave-driver and the slave whom he leads around on the end of a rope. After some more conversation, Pozzo, the master, and Lucky, the slave leave...
...least embodies a point of view. While a follower of Joyce as far as style is concerned, apparently Beckett is an existentialist by belief. Whatever else he may be doing, the playwright very successfully projects the existentialist disgust with the absurdity, the pointlessness of life. In Vladimir and Estragon he presents two symbols of humanity bravely living on even though Godot--the word at least suggests God if that is not its meaning--never does arrive to relieve their misery. Some critics have felt that the play ends in discouragement and a sense of utter emptiness, but the two hoboes...
...production displays is in every way superb, and very likely is the best work to come along this season. Each of the members of the all-Negro cast is an actor of unsurpassed stature. I am not in a position to compare Mantan Moreland with Bert Lahr, who played Estragon in the original American production, but it is difficult to imagine any performance which embodies slapstick drollery and technical subtlety to a higher degree of perfection. Earle Hyman as the more intelligent Valdimir suggests just the right amount of dignity, and Rex Ingram makes a beautifully fearsome and pathetic Pozzo...