Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Wait November 27, 2008
I loved Waiting for Godot. A classic of Dialogue Theatre. People need to realise that even though it seems as if nothing is happening, it really is. They are waiting for something, and everyone knows what happens when you wait for so long, when it comes it will be a disapointment. Whether they are Waiting for God. In the days after WW11 when people started to really question whether there was a God and if there was, why didnt he stop the war? A brilliant example of the Absurdist theatre that was starting to rise or the Anti Theatre or the Search for ones Self, the search for purpose. A Fantastic play
 Seek and ye shall find August 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
When this play was first performed in London, Harold Hobson, drama critic of The Sunday Times said it was 'a conversational necessity'.
Being a mere child at the time I though this meant it was good. I sat through it with my girl-friend, and it seemed to me to be complete gibberish. What does it mean? she asked. I'll tell you at the end of the performance, I replied, hoping for a denoument. I couldn't tell her, because to me it was meaningless. How many critics here tell you what it means?
Last year, aged 70 and professor of literature, I saw it again in a lauded production at the Barbican. I sat through the first half becoming more and more angry. Becket, I thought, is making fools of us all. At the Interval I walked out, and didn't come back. The play's message is simple: Most of us believe in God. We wait to eventually meet him. But there is no God. And we are wasting our time. Shakespeare said it so much more briefly and poetically in Macbeth. Life 'is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' Waiting for Godot signifies nothing. If you search for meaning I'm sure you'll find it. If you take the play at its face value, it's nonsense. Twice.
 Stark and bewildering February 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this play more than ten years ago for a course in contemporary drama. At first I was completely lost, considered the dialogue pointless, and found it incredibly boring. However, following a visit to The Gate Theatre in Dublin, my opinion of the play changed entirely - the dialogue's pointlessness made sense finally, the existentialism of the play became comprehensible, not to mention the subtle dark humour. I started to see the brilliance of the play - if we are bored, lost, bewildered, uncertain, unhappy, and at the same time, find humour in this, then the play has achieved its purpose (as I see it). In other words, it reflects the condition of human life as Beckett chose to describe it, and not only this, it succeeds in drawing us deeply into his description and invites us, as reluctant as we may be, to live it through our reading. A brilliant, if rather discomforting reflection on the pain, whispers of humour and ultimate meaninglessness of human life.
The Emperor's not wearing any clothes... September 16, 2007
0 out of 10 found this review helpful
Like the godawful works of Pinter that followed, Beckett's "Waiting For Godot" is a masterwork in the field of pretentious garbage. This play is neither funny nor entertaining; the ludicrous dialogue frustrates, the characters try their hardest to prove themselves wholly unreal, and, as that famous review quoted from the lines of the play itself, "nothing happens."
Yet today "Godot" is hailed as a masterpiece of modern drama owing to its apparently being a well of deep hidden meaning and symbolism. When one looks at a blank wall for long enough blotches and other irregularities gradually become noticeable to the eye; hell, some might even claim to see a face in said blotches. But let's be honest, it's just a blank wall. Similarly, "Godot" is a wholly unsatisfying waste of an hour and a half, saved by a horrifyingly large number of people's determination to see clothes on the Emperor when really there are none.
It will definitely come tomorrow November 11, 2006
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
I have always been tempted to write the sequel, "The arrival of Godot"
However like Fermat's last theorem I fear the world is unlikely ever to see this masterpiece. Godot is a very naughty boy who refuses to come in on time. And at his age (at least 53) he should know better.
Get ready for the telling off of all time when he does turn up!
This is a great play, mostly for what it does not say, rather than what it does.
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