1 Dr Kemi Atanda Ilori – “Don’t Wait for Godot” – A Review of the Performance

of Waiting for Godot

Don’t Wait for Godot

(A Review of the Performance of Waiting for Godot,

directed by Segun Ojewuji at the Liverpool Playhouse)

by

Kemi Atanda Ilori

(1st published in The Nigerian Guardian, Saturday 30th June, 1990)

“Don’t wait for Godot”, is the forceful message I came away with on watching Segun

Ojewuyi’s version, of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It was Ojewuyi’s major production

at the Liverpool Playhouse and he became an instant celebrity as his innovative, brash

directorial strategies went down well with the audience.

To call to mind, Waiting for Godot is usually regarded as the quintessence of European

absurdist drama, a genre that arose at the end of World War II. The label itself, coined by the

English critic Martin Esslin, is meant to disclose both the literary vision and dramaturgical

sensibilities of the hefty following that Beckett had in such playwrights as Arthur Adamov,

Harold Pinter, and Jean Genet among others. Existentialism was the primary influence. The

chaos and crudities that afflicted European society during and after the war meant for

existentialists the collapse of human institutions and the need for the individual to assert

himself outside the restrictive norms of such institutions. Based on liberty to upset the

convention of plot, characterization and language in their plays, they reject a coherent,

organic and linear format of action and character. Contrastively, their plays present a non-

2 Dr Kemi Atanda Ilori – “Don’t Wait for Godot” – A Review of the Performance

of Waiting for Godot

schematic, disorganized format. Language is disjointed and action is a series of parodies on

the absurdities of social living.

Beckett’s play represents this fashion well. In Waiting for Godot .Two male tramps are

loitering at the road side. The inference of their conversation shows that, mentally and

socially, they have been incapacitated by a system which marginalises the individual,

especially the un-privileged. Estragon and Vladimir are vagrants on the fringes of society.

They expect to be re-integrated into society through the influence of one Mr. Godot - a

supposed deliverer and benefactor. But their expectations are futile for Godot never appears.

Rather, a bossy Mr Pozzo and his menial happen upon the tramps. Pozzo imposes himself on

the tramps and through his slave, Lucky, he coerces the tramps to accept that their fate is

irredeemable since, as Lucky argues in a lengthy dissertation, time has fallen into oblivion,

science has become obsolete, and religion is vague. In other words, the fabric of society is in

shambles: the tramps must tolerate his noxious company or continue their futile wait for

Godot! The pessimism and hopelessness that conclude Beckett’s play reflect on this absurd

dilemma and the equally absurd choice of the tramps to do nothing to help themselves but to

wait for Godot.

This bare narrative is what Ojewuyi fleshes out into a robust comedy on the socio-political

situation of sub-Saharan African. Exploiting the familiarity with the “yeye” (satire) and “awada”

(comedy) varieties of Nigerian theatre, Ojewuyi breathes freshness into Beckett’s sunless

drama, adjusting its details to speak to the issues of disrupted democracies and depressed

economies in Africa. Suddenly, Estragon (Dos Santos) and Vladimir (Ebony) are not just

3 Dr Kemi Atanda Ilori – “Don’t Wait for Godot” – A Review of the Performance

of Waiting for Godot

tramps, they are people who have suffered the abuse of power and are living in society’s very

sink. They have been uprooted, made homeless and jobless ironically by various social

schemes, purportedly executed on their behalf. Those who have power on their side have

benefited themselves, rather than the poor. Pozzo and Lucky are Ojewuyi’s great comedians.

Their gestures are large, their movements very sweeping. As they advance upon the tramps,

they are received first with excitement which wanes into fear and, finally, disgust. In the end,

Pozzo becomes a burden and Lucky, who thinks for him, is shown as a self–serving

intellectual engaged to excuse Pozzo’s evil intents. He protects Pozzo’s evil intents. He

protects Pozzo’s seat and rucksack and flings himself upon the tramps when they ask for

what belongs to them by right, namely, the material substance in a society that belongs to all

of them. To underscore the meaning of his characters’ situation, Ojewuyi suffuses the

performance with symbols drawn both from myth and social history. The idea of a Godot

waiting in the wings to salvage society is powerfully debunked as a myth, surreptitiously

implanted in the minds of the tramps by a legacy of disrupted democracies. Intermittently,

bursts of gunfire punctuate the anxieties and expectations of the tramps. Harsh goullish

sounds occupy the auditorium to complement the ambience of fear and derangement

sustained by harsh interplay of lights. Pozzo and Lucky benefit from this ambience, and the

way society functions but not the tramps. For too many times they have been cheated of their

expectation and right and now they are waiting for Godot - a deliverer, any benefactor.

But Ojewuyi understands too well how such an innocent longing often comes to nothing when

the Pozzos of society shoot their way into power, or rig the elections to impose themselves on

the populace. Pozzo is the military stereotype. He is laden with medals, a handful of them

4 Dr Kemi Atanda Ilori – “Don’t Wait for Godot” – A Review of the Performance

of Waiting for Godot

awarded by an image making bureau. They are his dear credentials as a stand-in for Godot.

His large boots are part of the conditionality of a successfully negotiated loan. His slave Lucky

(David Cole) heralds his arrival, clutching a briefcase full of white papers, foreign exchange

and travelling passports. He is also weighed down with Pozzo’s seat and Pozzo’s rucksack

containing chicken portions. Godot is shown as the affluent West whose interest in Africa

must be given only a critical welcome. The West is subtly hinted of in the character of the Girl

(Joy Blakeman) who is Godot’s mouthpiece. She excites the hopes of the tramps by

promising the arrival of Godot but on each occasion Godot turns out to be Pozzo. As the play

ends, like a Christ, she stretches out her hand on a cross and two thieves, Pozzo and Lucky

lean on them.

How long will they continue to depend on the West for the subjection of the tramps? How long

will the tramp themselves resign to their fait waiting futilely for a Godot? These questions are

beyond the theatre: they lie out there among the tramps of society.