Waiting For Godot

For all its imposing reputation as the play where nothing happens for two hours, Waiting For Godot is Samuel Beckett’s most accessible play, as you might have seen if you caught the recent PBS production of his collected stage works. There’s a famous story about its enthusiastic reception from an audience of hardened lifers at San Quentin, but you don’t have to be a prisoner in lockdown to identify with the desperate plight of Vladimir and Estragon, who wait forlornly for someone to come and give their lives purpose. Yes, it’s bleak stuff, and there’s probably no playwright with a more hopeless outlook than Beckett, even among existential absurdists. But even if Godot stares directly into the abyssal question of whether life has any meaning, and suggests that it doesn’t, Beckett’s canon has a strong streak of mordant humor that is especially prevalent here—not only abstruse philosophical wit, but slapstick reminiscent of Buster Keaton. Corcoran Park Neighborhood Center, 3332 20th Ave. S., (612) 724-4539


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