Godot

Sunday Telegraph's theatre critic, Tim Walker, gave "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett only two stars. He said he just didn't see the point of it. He wrote: "I am afraid I am still, even after seeing this distinguished cast (Ian McKellan, Roger Rees and Matthew Kelly) give it their all, waiting to see what the point of it is. It is indeed awful."
He has pretty well summed up the point of the play in that sentence - it has no point. To Beckett life had no point, it was meaningless. People pretend that there is a purpose in life but there isn't.
Like Tim Walker I find the play "indeed awful". I have yet to see a production that is enjoyable. This production apparently is enjoyable but, Tim Walker suggests, the knockabout goings-on are really these actors giving comic performances that the play itself doesn't have.
Beckett can be funny but not I think in the way these actors play him; he is funny like Chekov. Chekov is at his funniest when his characters are moaning about the triviality of their lives. The ageing actress in "The Segull" when asked why she is dressed in black replies "I am in mourning for my life". You won't like Chekov if that's not amusing. And you won't like Beckett if the character he is portraying isn't moaning about life being utterly pointless.
When a production of "Waiting for Godot" was staged in an American prison in 1957 the worried producer thought he ought to introduce it; he compared the play to a piece of Jazz music "to which one must listen for whatever one may find in it". He thought there'd be a rsuh to the exit soon after the start. He was wrong. They all stayed to the end and they all enjoyed it. In their pointless existence they could see the point of it.