Waiting for Godot

by Simon Callow (The Guardian)
The following was written in July prior to Peter Hall's production of Waiting for Godot in its 50th anniversary.

Beckett's informed love of the great vaudevillians - especially Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin - enabled him to produce a work which stirs the heart of anyone who has been moved to laughter or tears by clowns, existing as they do in the tension between the dread of being alone and the horror of dependency. Eric Bentley, remarked of the first New York production that "highbrow writers have been enthusiastic about clowns and vaudeville for decades, but this impresses me as the first time that anything has successfully been done about the matter". Of course, it helps if the actors playing Vladimir and Estragon are great clowns or vaudevillians themselves. Bentley saw Bert Lahr - the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz - in the role of Estragon. "The perfect execution," he said, "by a lowbrow actor of a highbrow writer's intentions"; 20 years later, in London and Manchester, Max Wall performed the same service.

But such casting is a luxury; the play's opening image, of a tramp/ clown in his bowler hat, tugging at his boots, with a solitary tree behind him, shortly joined by his identically attired comrade, creates the sort of deeply stirring emotion that the first sight of a great clown produces. These men - like all the great theatre images: Mother Courage with her cart; blind Lear; Falstaff wrapped around Doll Tearsheet - come from our dreams, from deep in our unconscious memories. We are them; they are us.