Waiting for Godot as a capitalist-aristocrat, and Lucky as labour-proletarian. This prompted Beckett to issue a rare statement, stating that the reaction was based on a misconception of the play. To Beckett, the play tries to not be able to be defined. The New York showing of the play was well-received with critics. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times praised Lahr for his performance as Estragon. Waiting for Godot Waiting for Godot ( ) is a play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), wait for the arrival of someone named Godot who never arrives, and while
Samuel Beckett Days" (1961). These plays—which are often considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been instrumental in the so-called "Theatre of the Absurd"—deal in a darkly humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers. The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin in a book of the same name; Beckett and "Godot" were centerpieces of the book. Esslin argued these plays were the fulfilment of Albert Camus's concept of "the absurd"; this is one reason Beckett is often falsely labeled as an existentialist (this is based on the assumption that Camus was an existentialist,