Working Out Godot.

When the theatre where I once worked put on a production of Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot I watched it five times and loved it. It was undoubtedly my favourite of all the productions performed there. The play – and in particular my great fondness for it – has always fascinated me, so tonight I read the terribly academic Wiki article.

It seems that Waiting for Godot has invited countless speculative interpretations down the years, ranging from the existential to the moralistic to the expression of Christian symbolism and many more. This in itself intrigues me because of what it says about the academic need to analyse and label everything. When one of the actors performing one of the roles asked Becket what it was all about, the author simply replied ‘symbiosis.’ When somebody asked me why I liked it so much, all I could come up with was ‘it shows that words can sound wonderful whether they mean anything or not.’ Seems I don’t have an academic mind.

But at least I never echoed the sentiments of many members of the audience when leaving the auditorium: ‘What the hell was that all about?’ That’s because I didn’t need to know.