Waiting for Godot - Belvoir St Theatre (original) (raw)

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Waiting

for Godot

By Samuel Becket Director Neil Armfield

• Venue Upstairs Theatre
• Dates 7 Jan – 9 Feb 2003

A co-production with Sydney Festival

Waiting for Godot was first performed in Paris in 1953 and had its English language premiere in London in 1955. There the opening night was received with a combination of quiet bemusement and outright hostility, with half the audience leaving at interval. However after some adulatory reviews were published the production rapidly became ‘the rage of London’, as it had done in Paris.

Kenneth Tynan, showing extraordinary foresight, stated in The Observer, “it forced me to re-examine the rules which have hitherto governed the drama, and, having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough. It is validly new.”

Harold Hobson said “at the best (it will be) something that will securely lodge in the corner of your mind for as long as you live.”

Belvoir was proud to present Becket’s ground breaking Waiting for Godot in this earthy, intensely theatrical classic text.

John Gaden. Image: Heidrun Lohr