Waiting for Godot

I was in New York this past weekend. I have always wanted to see a Broadway show although most of the "big" shows make it to Toronto. This time I chose Waiting for Godot (Written by Samuel Beckett, Directed by Anthony Page). I had read the play before and seen its menial creation in Marathi. So, this time I was interested in watching a contemporary treatment to this classic play.

The Roundabout Theatre Company presented the tragicomedy with a focus on the comic aspect of it. Just as I believe that beauty is an essential part of art, I believe that entertainment is essential part of any type of creation especially performing arts.

I believe this version of the play achieved the most. The presentation seemed completely honest to the script without making it sound heavy and unnecessarily deep. I agree with the director that the script itself calls for humor. Humor in its most simple and factual form. To me the most profound and humorous line was in the end, "We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. Unless Godot comes". How many times have we felt like dying during a period of depression and never actually coming to doing it!

The play itself is of course genius because of the way it is written and like one of the actors said during the discussion that, it seems more and more true as you get older. It is not realistic, but it is true.

I loved the fact that it was treated exactly as the script demanded. If you have read the play, you will know that after a while you start thinking "What the... !" And you laugh at yourself and then you continue reading out of curiosity to find out who is Godot! That is the beauty of the creation.

Apparently when Samuel Beckett was asked who Godot was, he had answered, "If I knew it, I would have put it in the play", without hiding behind pretense or heaviosity! :) This was very clear in this creation because they have not tried to make anything more of it than already is. It was presented in a very factual, down-to-earth manner which I enjoyed.

Although the second act is the repetition of the first act it is the genius of the playwright that makes it not only bearable but also entertaining and in fact adds to the humor. The utter senselessness of our being that sometimes seems to be stuck in habitual and ritual chores, driven by hope, is what I saw in the play.

I would like to end this impression with the following lines, that I feel sum up the play well... "... you see the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity.... " My Indian friends would remember this famous line in Amar, Akbar, Anthony. :)