Always Waiting for Godot

Bill and Ted? Together again? On stage? In an absurdist existential dramady that has intrigued, baffled, challenged, and entertained actors and audiences alike for decades?

Well, I say, sign me up.

The Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot has been troubling the arts world since 1952 when it premiered and while it is "tough to perform" and "impossible to understand," it remains infectiously popular, and as the Washington Post recently explained, "Actors love it."

Famously, nothing happens, twice.

Two men in bowler hats wait near a tree on a country road for the mysterious Godot, and they are eventually met by a third man and his enslaved companion, and later a boy. The next day, the scenario repeats, almost.

For the Dublin-born Samuel Beckett, a self-proclaimed “non-knower and non-can-er,” the spareness and even the meaninglessness were the point. When “Waiting for Godot,” his first produced play, premiered in French in Paris in 1953, it baffled some audiences but would go on to transform storytelling with its lack of plot, existentialist themes and acknowledgment that, if you find yourself standing around long enough, even human existence begins to feel absurd.

The play’s influence permeated theater and spread into pop culture, becoming fodder for sitcom homages and shorthand for discussing the meaning of life or (spoiler alert) waiting for someone who does not come. It’s a “Hamlet”-esque acting feat and a frequent, poignant offering in unconventional places where humanity is stressed to its limits, such as prisons, Sarajevo in wartime and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And, somehow, it’s also pretty funny.

As a revival begins this month on Broadway starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter — co-stars of the Bill & Ted movie franchise, itself a philosophical cult classic — many of the well-known actors and directors who have done “Waiting for Godot” discussed the challenges of the famously impenetrable play, its vast influence and what it all means. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

The New York Times recently sat down with Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, and director Jamie Lloyd for a discussion about how this "most excellent" rendition of a classic play came to the stage.