Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot (1956). Samuel Beckett's absurdist “tragicomedy” told of two seedy men who joke, complain, and consider suicide while waiting for a blurry figure they called Godot. When he fails to appear they decide to leave, but stand perfectly still. This baffling play had its New York premiere at the John Golden Theatre in 1956 and enjoyed one of the longest runs (fifty‐nine performances) of any work of the theatre of the absurd, thanks in large measure to remarkable acting by Bert Lahr and E. G. Marshall. Lahr's performance was all the more remarkable in that he is reputed never to have understood a word he was speaking, but he had lots of company across the footlights. Often revived across America, Waiting for Godot enjoyed a nine‐month run in an Off Broadway revival in 1971 and a star‐studded, limited‐run mounting at Lincoln Center in 1988 was a hot ticket.