Waiting for Godot concludes its limited engagement on Broadway

The Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, starring Bill Irwin (Vladimir) and Nathan Lane (Estragon), concludes its limited engagement on 12 Jul 2009. When the show closes it will have played 31 previews and 85 regular performances.

The play opened on 30 Apr 2009, following previews from 3 Apr 2009, and was originally scheduled to end its limited engagement on 5 Jul 2009, but was extended through to 12 Jul 2009.

The show opened to mostly excellent reviews: "entertainment of a high order." (NY Times); "hypnotically entrancing" (NY Daily News); "This is bliss" (NewsDay); "screamingly funny and howlingly sad" (Back Stage).

Waiting for Godot also stars John Goodman (Pozzo), John Glover (Lucky) and Matthew Schechter (Boy), and is directed by Tony award winner Anthony Page.

Waiting for Godot's story revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone � or something � named Godot. Vladimir (Bill Irwin) and Estragon (Nathan Lane) wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind�s inexhaustible search for meaning.

A cornerstone of twentieth century theatre, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett�s first professionally produced play. It premiered in Paris in 1953 and premiered on Broadway in 1956 at the John Golden Theatre. Beckett�s language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existentialism of post-World War II Europe.