About the Play:

Waiting for Godot was one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.

Waiting for Godot is a full-length dramatic comedy by Samuel Beckett. By the side of a deserted country road, two wanderers wait by a lonely tree, to meet up with a mysterious man named Godot, who they hope will change their lives for the better. Instead, two eccentric travellers arrive, one man on the end of the other's rope. The results are both funny and dangerous. Waiting for Godot is a classic of modern theatre and a perennial favourite of colleges and high schools.

Waiting for Godot was written in 1949 and dubbed "the most important play of the 20th century" by The New York Times. The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone – or something – named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait endlessly near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett's language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existentialism of post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time. A truly haunting, perplexing and sardonically amusing play, Waiting for Godot is generally recognized as the quintessential play of the 20th century.

Waiting for Godot premiered in French as En attendant Godot at Théâtre de Babylone, a tiny avant-garde theatre on the Left Bank in Paris in 1953. It has become one of the most important and best known plays of the 20th century. An incredible roll call of actors and directors have wrought interpretations of Beckett's fascinatingly elusive masterpiece – its debut in English was directed by a 24-year-old Peter Hall; the ever-patient Vladimir and Estragon have been played by actors including Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart, Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall and Nathan Lane.

Cast: 4 male, 1 boy

What people say:

"[Godot is] among the most studied, monographed, celebrated and sent-up works of modern art, and perhaps as influential as any from the last century. The nonstory of two tramps at loose ends in a landscape barren of all but a single tree, amusing or distracting themselves from oppressive boredom while they wait for a mysterious figure who never arrives, the play became the ur-text for theatrical innovation and existential thought in the latter half of 20th century." — The New York Times

"One of the most noble and moving plays of our generation, a threnody of hope deceived and deferred but never extinguished; a play suffused with tenderness for the whole human perplexity; with phrases that come like a sharp stab of beauty and pain." — The Times (London)

"…moving, often funny, grotesquely beautiful and utterly absorbing." — New York Post

"...a witty and poetic conundrum." — The Guardian (London)

"…at once pathetic and hilarious." — New York World-Telegram

About the Playwright:

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was an Irish avant-garde playwright, poet and novelist. One of the leading literary and dramatic figures of the twentieth century, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 and commended for having "transformed the destitution of man into his exaltation." Born in Foxrock, Ireland, he attended Trinity University in Dublin. In 1928, he visited Paris for the first time and fell in with a number of avant-garde writers and artists, including fellow Irish writer, James Joyce. In 1937, he settled in Paris permanently. He wrote in both French and English and is perhaps best known for his plays, especially En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot).