Word: godot
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...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. A boy comes...
Such are the facts of Waiting for Godot, and every-one in the audience would probably agree that they saw this much. But when it comes to deciding what it means, or even what, precisely, was said, all agreement ends. And that, Beckett has declared, is just as it should be, since the play is calculated to mean exactly what each member of the audience wants it to mean. At the risk of contradicting the author, I suggest that his statement is not quite accurate, because if the play makes no definite point, it at least embodies a point...
...than people. The mainspring of drama is conflict between very much living and three-dimensional people, even if they are confined to a stage. Beckett, however, expected to let his ideas carry most of the interest through the evening, but they are not always enough. Thus while Waiting for Godot is in large measure a success, I doubt if it will gain the stature of a modern classic--as many of its supporters believe it will...
Waiting for Godot, the event the expectation of which has enabled more than a few of us to take that next step through this winter's slush. Pozzo and the rest of Beckett's boys played by an all-Negro cast. Tonight is the second of ten, at the Shubert. (Mat. on Sattidy...
...Bald Soprano contrasts vividly with The Lady and Her Sources. Where Salinas had been ironic, Eugene Ionesco is abstruse, absurd, and abnormous. His "Anti-play" makes Waiting for Godot look pale and logical. Lines follow each other without connection, characters change identities, and the humor is always mixed with bewilderment. When there is logic, it is carried to such an extreme that it becomes ridiculous. Yet, every so often Ionesco shows us a glimmering of reality that other writers seldom uncover. InThe Bald Soprano the characters seem to say whatever comes to their minds--momentary antagonisms, sexual impulses, errant thoughts...