My Dad has brought a version of this Samuel Beckett (SB) play up from Jacksonville; it features Burgess Meredith (aka the Penguin) as Vladmir and Zero Mostel as Estragon. Growing up, this play was kind of like a Bible to us, and we memorized certain phrases and exchanges more by osmosis than by deliberation--but children will memorize stuff they hear or like much more readily than we do as adults. (I just ordered the screenplay of MP and the Holy Grail--my children don't need it.)
Anyway, this is the first time I had ever seen a performance of the play. We grew up with the audio version featuring Bert Lahr (aka Cowardly Lion); and E.G. Marshall, a more serious player. SB designated "Waiting for Godot" (WG) as a tragicomedy, as indeed it is, but it doesn't hurt to have at least one clown/buffoon on the stage. This version includes a lot of vaudeville standard sight gags, like trying to help someone up and then falling on him yourself. Seeing it done by old pros, it is a lot more of a comedy or a farce than I recall. I recall it being played utterly on the serious side. I rather like it better this way--and in fact playing it for laughs makes it err more on the side of utter absurdity, rather than as a play that takes itself too seriously, which at times it does--the music in the Lahr/Marshall version gave it a very threatening tone which I don't find in this version, put out, by the way, by Grove Press.
I wanted to watch it with son Stephen, who has a wider and deeper view of literature than I do--and his first thought is a fascinating one--he compared it to the "neutrals" in Dante's first circle of hell. Not bold sinners like the traitors at the bottom; but angels and men who refused to commit themselves to God or Satan and spent their lives, and hence their eternity endlessly pursuing a blank banner. Why do they do it? Well in Dante's version, there is the additional element of merciless clouds of flies driving them, "On! On!" as Pozzo the failed dictator would have it. Represented by Pozzo's whip, perhaps? (This would be rather difficult to stage, obviously--and quite a bit simpler to stage a minimalist play where nothing happens--or does it?)
Actually in this version there's a lot of movement--all for naught of course, at least that's the philosophy we are supposed to get from it. But surprisingly, this time around, it made me feel anything but hopeless. There is the matter of the tree leafing out overnight. Is this an illusion, as Beckett would have it? Or is this a reverse variation of the parable of the fig tree, insisting that the world will go on? Endlessly?
Or is this actually a supernatural occurrence? One cannot rule it out--and SB makes no attempt to do so, surprisingly. There's a lot of ignorance on display here, obviously, and SB is making no final judgements, to his credit. But it does put him in neutral, as noted above
Two things, no, three, that I noticed for the first time. One is the absolute absence of anything of the feminine. One group, inappropriately I think, wanted to stage WG with an all-female cast; and the SB estate turned them down. So in a way it is a "guy thing" and as such exists in a fantasy island type of setting. Second is the relative absence of children, at least in the sense that the nameless and seemingly innocent boy-child is driven away not once but twice; and represents the ultimate frustration point of the play, hence earning the threats of the two tramps.
So this is ultimately a very male-oriented trope. Which may account for why this appeals to my Dad; and why it was written right after WWII--indeed it may be another form of "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Catch 22, and my Dad's own existential novel about postwar Germany/Czechoslovakia, "Winner Take
All." ( I actually still prefer the original title, "The Little Men," which I think is more descriptive, since there are no clear winners in the novel, as is true in WG also. But I may be missing the irony, which was also implied in the original title with reference to Louisa May Alcott, perhaps.)
The third revelation, if that's the right term, is that this play could easily be G-rated. Even the swearing is about as mild as it can be. I suppose one reason for that is that, for a minimalist writer, swearing has a tendency to draw attention to itself; and as such may retard the forward motion of the work. This may seem odd for a play about stasis--but it is still linear, leads to conclusions, and in that sense is not an "Eastern Philosophy" statement, either. "Aeons" are implied but never addressed in the play and so it is very much in the Western tradition.
This absence of foul language seems peculiar--but the play is so brilliantly written overall that "punctilious pig" actually sounds appropriate, even for two male bums. There's also no question that this is satire, and is founded on the literary works, not just of the 20th Century, but goes back even further than the Greeks. Which fits well with it "Ecclesiastical" message of, "Nothing new under the sun." "It's all a chasing after the wind." Much more could be said of course; but in a way this play is very Scripture-dependent, and is in that sense a reaction too, say.The Larger Work; which took only about 2000 years to put together. Even SB cannot do what Einstein said about Christ--"It is impossible to dismiss Him --the luminous figure of the Nazarene--with a bon mot."
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