Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett

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30 of 30 Ciao users found the following review helpful

1st2thebar

Member since 11/05/2005

Reviews written: 468

Sixty Years On... We're Still Waiting 16/01/2013

User recommends the product

Advantages Thought provoking - A very simplistic notion, usually disregarded.
Disadvantages Highlights the human condition - hardly uplifting.

Scenes: I - Didi & Gogo II - Pozzo & Lucky III - Boy - - - Sixty years ago this month it was the 'Waiting for Godot's' premiere We are all waiting for the inevitable, albeit I guess you've got to do something pro-active while you wait - anyhow, it is human nature to do something with your time; yep this is one of the laws of humanity, not that I've read a drafted copy called: 'While Your Waiting For Godot', if I did it would have been a waste of time deciphering over it's contents. My elders made it clear to me, I cannot stare aimlessly into the yonder next to a barren tree for my entire ... more
46 of 46 Ciao users found the following review helpful

tashat

Waiting for Whom? 30/05/2005

User recommends the product

Advantages Applicable to a modern audience
Disadvantages Takes a lot of studying to truly understand it

*Original Thoughts* Admittedly, when I was first told we were to study this play in drama, I was a little apprehensive. I had loosely heard of Beckett - his works being associated with little action and long synonymous dialect. Obviously not something that appealed to me… and I was right, this play was dull, strange and bore little impact onto my life. At least, that's what I thought. As I began to read the pages, I began to discover the fine art of Beckett's work, something which I found appealing and strangely hypnotic - words I don't usually associate with simply just reading a play. It is ... more
4 of 4 Ciao users found the following review helpful

sandy.imy

nothing comes out of no thing 02/02/2009

User recommends the product

Advantages excellent mindcatcher
Disadvantages none

With modern times come the distortion of the old believes where everything was held supreme from man to god to animals. My love for this new existentialist literature make me read these plays and novels again and again. I can't stop myself as these plays novella or novels simply and marvellously baffle blow me away from my comfortable position in the world to the bare hard rocky realities of life. I can never imagine that some day I hav to identify myself to a person who eats carrots on good days and turnips on bad days and has one thing to do in the life that is waiting. The word waiting is ... more
15 of 16 Ciao users found the following review helpful

punkdizzylaa

Waiting for a good available production of this 30/03/2003

User recommends the product

Advantages Fascinating, beautifully comical, unpatronising, complete yet not satisfying
Disadvantages Probably boring to some due to lack of real action

I first discovered this play when I was 15. I study Drama at school and found the bit of the play we acted really amusing (if completely random) so I went out and bought it. Seen as a whole, it's not so much random as life-like, in an obscure and worrying way. The play deals with the subject of Life, portraying humanity and its eternal wait for something amazing to happen. Two of the characters (of which there are only four) spend the play ambling about the stage, waiting for Godot to appear and sporadically threatening to leave or suggesting that they commit suicide. Nothing happens, as ... more
8 of 9 Ciao users found the following review helpful

Kozinski

Waiting And Waiting 23/12/2000

User recommends the product

Advantages Original, funny and interesting
Disadvantages Not everyone's cup of tea

Samuel Beckett has been a great influence to 20th Century theatre. In the 1950's he invented a new kind of play - absurd. Now many of you may read this play and think that it is the biggest lot of rubbish, but as I always say - a play is meant to be seen and not read. "Waiting For Godot" was the beginning of absurd drama and absolutely slated by the press on it's opening. One reviewer wrote "Nothing happens. It's terrible!" But somehow, it caught on and people like Stoppard, Ionesco and many others followed in Beckett's footsteps. The play shows us a day in the life of Vladimir and Estragon ... more
9 of 10 Ciao users found the following review helpful

kenigma

This really isn't for everyone but its good 22/02/2001

User recommends the product

Advantages Great play
Disadvantages Hard to get into for some people

Waiting for Godot was originally written in French but was subsequently translated back to English by Beckett. It was Beckett's first play, and many would say one of his greatest. There are heavy influences from Beckett's peer-group in the "Theatre of the Absurd" - which later influenced writers such as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. The two main charachters are Vladimir and Estragon who are waiting on a deserted road for Godot to come along. There is also a boy who appears at the end of each act to tell Vladimir and Estragon that Godot will not be coming that night but in act two he denies ... more
7 of 8 Ciao users found the following review helpful

cormacbrown

Brilliantly bleak 19/04/2005

User recommends the product

Advantages One of the best plays of our time
Disadvantages May not appeal to everyone due to lack of action

Beckett has often been described as the best playwright of modern times. I find it hard to agree with this as some of his works seem simply too bizarre to be enjoyed or understood. However, Waiting for Godot is one of the best plays written in the twentieth century, portraying a terribly bleak view of the repetitiveness and monotony of the meaningless cycle of life and commenting on the futility of even trying to find a meaning in life. This is what the two main characters Vladimir, or "Didi", and Estragon, or "Gogo", are trying to do while they wait for Godot (presumably representing the God ... more
6 of 7 Ciao users found the following review helpful

Motley

Wait for ages and then nothing happens 28/12/2000

User recommends the product

Advantages Brilliant play and well written.
Disadvantages Can be boring to people who do not appreciate it.

Waiting for Godot is a classic and it seems to be either loved or hated by those who have read, seen or studied it. It is unsual, to say the very least, but when I studied, then saw and then stage managed this play, I grew to love it. Beckett has written a play about two old tramps (more or less), Vladimir and Estragon, who sit and wait for ever for a 'Godot' who never comes. We are never told why, or who Godot is (although it is a he)and much of teh attraction of this play is because so much is left up to the imagination of the viewer or reader. I had to see it in order to enjoy it. For me ... more
9 of 12 Ciao users found the following review helpful

sarahsoo

Beckett's master piece 11/04/2005

User recommends the product

Advantages An introduction to one of the most infamous theatre changing plays
Disadvantages 'Nothing happens, nobody comes'

I have always been a lover of the theatre, but only recently discovered the 'Theatre of the Absurd.' This type of theatre could be described as quirky or bizarre and Samuel Beckett is one of the main comtenders of this breed of theatre. Waiting for Godot follows two days in the lives of Vladimir, an incontinent thinker and Estragon, a tramp like ex poet. These two charactes are set in a area where there is only a tree. They discuss death, life, reincarnation, birth and many other moral subjects. They sit and wait for one reason, to wait for Godot. Who Godot is, well, we never find out. The ... more
1 of 3 Ciao users found the following review helpful

lewiscrofts

absurdly brilliant 17/07/2000

User recommends the product

Advantages originality
Disadvantages difficult to read

This play, first written in French and performed in France, is a novel invention and is one of the great works of modern theatre. It breaks down all the conventions and rules of theatre (set up by Aristotle and his unities) and produces and almost non-play. There is no action, little characterisation and no hints at time or place, in short the audience are totally lost. It is a strange beast of a play and should be read as well as seen on the strange. It is totally original and you will have read nothing like it, ever. ... more