Waiting for Godot (1953)

TBH, I may have given this a higher rating because I also saw the production and loved it. Also TBH, if you don't love absurdist writing, you're not going to like this ( )

Waiting for Godot in Antarctica

An audience gathers to preview a screening of a new version of this Samuel Beckett play. The directed striped his rendition down to bare existential black and white by filming in Antarctica and using penguins as actors. The problem of dialogue is solved by the technique of voice-over.

In the first act, two penguins stand on bleak, snow-covered ice. There’s a close up of one penguin. The voice-over says, “Nothing to be done.”

The camera slowly scans to the other penguin who waddles next to the first. His voice-over begins, “I’m beginning to come round to that opinion.”

The play continues in this manner. Occasionally, the two penguins rock back and forth in their stark, empty white world. When in the middle of the second act, a third penguin approaches, the two penguins waddle awkwardly to an icy hill and then toboggan on their stomachs down the hill and into the water.

After a soul-searching monologue, the third penguin also toboggans down the hill into the water. At the end of the play the two original penguins rock back and forth. One penguin says, “Well, shall we go swimming again?

The other penguin replies, “Yes, let’s go.”

But the penguins do not move.
( )

Going to the party as Godot and never showing up. ( )

Excerpts from my original GR review (Apr 2011):
- Vladimir: Yes you do know them.
Estragon: No I don't know them.
Vladimir: We know them, I tell you. You forget everything.

- Is this an existential masterpiece?
Is this crap?
Are they waiting for hope? Or, are they not?
Pointless to review a work meant for the stage. But I'd gladly put on my theatre of the absurd hat and go see it. ( )

Really? This has been so trumped up. Either I badly need an explanation for something I'm too dull to grasp (entirely plausible), or this is crap like Catch-22 that was so "avant-garde" so existential but entirely pointless.