Waiting for Godot – Old Paper & Cats, Reviews by S. Hargrave

A Week Mostly Inside

Apocalyptic orange skies had us stuck inside, frantically scouring the internet for what we can do to try to fight the climate crisis. Because there’s nothing harder than looking outside into the smoky haze and knowing that there’s nothing you can do. That it feels like the world is on fire partially because it is.

Also? It’s hard to have five pairs of eyes staring up at you and crying for their normal walkies, but not being able to let them outside. Thankfully, Wesker still ate well and accepted playtime with string as a substitute.

An orange cat crouches in the sunlight over a bilingual edition of Waiting for Godot.

A Play You Have to See

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is one of those plays that you should take the opportunity to see at least once in your life. That being said, I was excited to see a performance offered in our local festival this year. The performance did not disappoint, so I decided to review the play here.

An orange tabby and a tortoiseshell cat crouch over a bilingual copy of Waiting for Godot/En Attendant Godot. The thick paper back has a black-and-white cover with lime green text.

I think everyone knows some pieces of Godot and the wait for him that never ends. However, there is so much more to this work. It features two down-and-outs named Vladimir and Estragon stuck under a tree and waiting for Godot. While they are waiting, they talk about life’s absurdities, suicide, and even the class system. As the script twists and turns and day becomes night becomes day the audience is asked to examine hard questions about existence and what it all comes down to when the moon is full and there’s nothing left to wait for.

An orange cat sits beside a screen door, lit from one side by sunlight and cloaked in shadow on the other side. A book sits by her feet.

What Are You Waiting For?

As long as Godot has been around, Beckett has been asked who Godot is and what the play means. Normally, I would play close attention to what he has to say, but — as I will cover in the next point — in this case I’m not sure Beckett wasn’t trying to obfuscate the point along with several other things.

I think it’s relatively clear that Waiting for Godot is at its core an existentialist play. It is humans asking basic questions about what is existence and they are doing so while pointing out the absurdity of religious belief. What are we waiting for? And if one waits too long, what a waste that is, because all of life is passing you by.

Two cats crouch, looking through a screen towards sunshine. On the floor beside them is a copy of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

The Problem with Beckett

It sounds absolutely horrific and ridiculous, but it is true that Beckett tried to make it illegal for this play to be performed by female actors. Why? His response was that women don’t have prostrates and therefore could not be Vladimir who disappears to pee during the course of the play. Right. No, the real answer is just misogyny. The real answer is that Beckett didn’t believe that women could ask these questions or struggle with their existence. To Beckett, women were just a vehicle for childbirth.

Beckett is wrong. And while thankfully his legal wrangling has never been successful, I am going to do my part by ignoring his opinions. Go see the play. Draw your own conclusions from it. Know that he is deceased and no longer making any kind of revenue off of your seeing this part of dramatic canon. Also know that misogyny doesn’t always win. There have been productions of Waiting for Godot which featured all-female casts.

A copy of Beckett's Waiting for Godot features line-green text and a black-and-white picture of a man looking at a child beneath a bare tree on an otherwise empty stage.

Maybe A Walk Today

I think a walk is in order now that the air quality warning is over and the weather has cooled off. The cats are at the screen door and enjoying the breeze. Each of them will probably get some form of outside time later. Bandersnatch has already squeezed outside for an illegal tour of the verandah, much to the assumed terror of the local chipmunks.