Anthony Page of ‘Waiting for Godot’ Teaches Us How to Pronounce Its Title

By Erik Piepenburg
Waiting for GodotSara Krulwich/The New York Times From left, Nathan Lane, John Goodman and Bill Irwin in “Waiting for Godot.”

Playing Six Degrees of Samuel Beckett with Anthony Page, the director of the Broadway revival of “Waiting for Godot,” doesn’t take very long.

As the artistic director at the Royal Court Theater in London at various times from 1964 through 1973, Mr. Page worked with Beckett on the first British revival of “Godot.” Talk about source material.

PageSara Krulwich/The New York Times Anthony Page

“He was full of humor,” Mr. Page said of that time, when Beckett was nearing 60 and Mr. Page was about 30. “We enjoyed working on it with him.”

The new “Godot” revival, a production of the Roundabout Theater Company, opens Thursday at Studio 54 with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin as the tramps Estragon and Vladimir, John Goodman as the blowhard Pozzo and John Glover as his slave, Lucky.

Mr. Page sat down last week to discuss what it’s like to direct the classic play and to narrate an audio slide show about working with Beckett.

The actors in this revival of “Waiting for Godot” pronounce the title character’s name as GOD-dough, with the accent on the first syllable. In this country, at least, I’ve heard it pronounced Go-DOUGH, with the accent on the second syllable.

Well GOD-dough is what Samuel Beckett said. Also, the word has to echo Pozzo. That’s the right pronunciation. Go-DOUGH is an Americanism, which isn’t what the play intended.

You’ve got a cast with several big Broadway names. What were rehearsals like?

They were quite difficult. The play has a particular style. All these actors came from different places as to how they would approach it. I guess my job really has been to try and guide them to be in the same play. They were exciting rehearsals, but they were difficult. We often stopped at the end of the day feeling completely exhausted. I can’t really remember particular days. We just kept working.

The Beckett estate is adamant about not changing anything — not the text, not the stage directions — when producing one of his plays. How do you bring your own interpretation to his work when there are such restrictions?

I was brought up at the Royal Court, where we always did new plays. So I’m pretty used to working with a text. I don’t rewrite. We were taught to respect the text and get on with it. I think with this play you have to let the people find the parts in their own way. Knowing it, having done it a long time before, helps because you have an instinct about where to lead them.

Santo Loquasto designed the set, with its iconic lone tree. Talk about the look of the show.

Beckett really visualized the thing being on an empty stage. When we did it in 1965 he actually stripped away some of the set that had been designed. He thought it shouldn’t be there. I always feel a little guilty about having a more realistic set. But I think it is right for that theater, which is a big theater and a big stage. I was rather shocked by the size of the theater when I first came in. We’ve miked the play. They wear body mikes so they can play very lightly and freely. I thought the set should have some atmosphere and it should enclose them. I think it’s worked very well.

For someone who has heard about the play or likes the actors in it, but doesn’t know much about it, is there something they should know before seeing it?

They should just come in and listen. I don’t think you have to have any knowledge. Just come in and experience it. It’s written very simply, actually. It’s like an old piece of theater. It’s like something quite ancient in a way.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Theo51 April 30, 2009 · 2:20 pm

Perhaps I’ll write a contemporary satire of this play and call if “Waiting for The Dough.” I am not sure whether to insist on accenting “The” of “Dough.” I will reach a decision soon, and will be sure to include that edict in the stage directions and my last will and testament.

larry singer April 30, 2009 · 2:23 pm

I saw it once. Upon leaving the theater, pronounced it GOD-awful.

Peter Heinegg April 30, 2009 · 2:38 pm

“I don’t think you have to have any knowledge”?
Good luck trying to decipher on the fly Lucky’s delirious
monologue with its references to “divine athambia,”
“the divine Miranda,” or “the Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy” WITHOUT some prior knowledge and study.

Brian Donohue April 30, 2009 · 2:50 pm

Excellent interview, I only wish it were longer. But then again, the message is as simple as can be — something that artists since the time of Lao Tzu have repeated: remove every obstruction between your audience and their experience, and the ideas will take care of themselves. The interpretation of a great work of art is not a director’s or an actor’s job; it is the work of each unique individual within the audience. Lead with the heart, and the mind will follow. A luminous reminder which, as Page implies, we continue to forget or ignore in our culture.

Brian April 30, 2009 · 2:57 pm

Perhaps Mr. SInger (#2) will prefer the next iteration of Spiderman (sp.?).

Mark April 30, 2009 · 3:01 pm

Isn’t pronouncing it GOD-dough sort of a symptom of the unfortunate British/Irish tendency to take any two-syllable word that they suspect might be even vaguely French and brutally de-Gallicize it by landing too hard on that first syllable (BUFF-ay, GAH-rahj, etc.?) I mean, with all due respect to Beckett, it’s a made-up name for a character who never appears, so I think there’s some latitude on pronunciation–even if GOD-dough may have nice echoes of not only of Pozzo, but of “God” plus “o” (zero).

James Shewalter April 30, 2009 · 3:11 pm

I saw the show on Sunday. Lane and Irwin work well together, but Goodman mugged his way though the play using some kind of Sidney Greenstreet or George Sanders accent. Poor John Glover looks like he escaped from “Rocky Horror” and has his long monologue upstaged by Lane’s clowning. It completely diminished it’s effect and robs Glover of any applause. The physical production, which has a phony Musical Comedy feel, as if it were the latest adaptation from some Dickens novel, reminded me of a ride at Great Adventure. The fake rock piles could easily be part of their White Water Rafting Adventure. At times the subway is heard roaring under the house and I half expected the stage to suddenly fill with rushing water followed by screaming children on a circular raft. Waste and Pine, Indeed.

Andrea April 30, 2009 · 3:19 pm

#3, sometimes it’s just the sound of the words…Dylan, Bob doesn’t always make sense either, but I never tire of hearing his lyrics.

Tom April 30, 2009 · 4:34 pm

“GOD-o” is an Irish diminutive or familiar form, like “boyo.”

Bob Borsh April 30, 2009 · 4:42 pm

Saw the matinee yesterday.

Lane was doing a little to much schickt in the beginning of the second act, so much so that I thought he would break into “I wanna be a Producer” at one point.

The subway roar below is annoying. You would think the Roundabout would do something to upgrade against this problem.

Glover is mesmerizing in his speech.

I had never seen the play before. I’m glad I had the chance to witness this revival

DavidFSF April 30, 2009 · 5:20 pm

I’m with Mark at #6 about GOD-oh being a British bastardization.

This is a play that was written in French. The name in the title ends in a very typically French silent T. Yet we’re supposed to infer that it’s Americans who’ve been pronouncing it wrong with emphasis on the last syllable?

Just like the supposed relevance of the word “god” in the name. How is the name choice significant in the original French?

Harvey Sherman April 30, 2009 · 5:40 pm

It was a New York afternoon of pure theater.
I can only imagine the challange Anthony Page faced in directing these commanding indivdual personalities, in a script that only be described as formidable.
Bravo !!

hats’n’all April 30, 2009 · 6:06 pm

The play was wrtten in french and mostly is a continuim of idiomatic utterances which have resonances above the languge itself. A phenomenon of France, it is the first thing to be really properly interested in and impressed by after grammar and vocabulary have been gotten a hold of.
This in “En attendant Godot” can be strangely yet actually lost on a french actor and if so Beckett is strangely and luminescently more any quality attributed.
In english, though, “Waiting for Godot” is actor-proof and has ever been as the translation does not require the tacking down of the under-pinning of the super-communicative flow of idioms Beckett first wrote out .

sewinggirl April 30, 2009 · 6:56 pm

@#6, I so agree! Though #9 has a good point.

Euan April 30, 2009 · 7:44 pm

re:#6 and #11: What?! If Beckett wrote it (in both French and English) and says that its the right pronunciation how is it a ‘bastardization’? Maybe you’re just pronouncing it wrong, there’s no need to start searching for some Anglo conspiracy,

Jon Reiner April 30, 2009 · 8:17 pm

I firsrt studied the play in a British college in 1982. There, the title was most definitely pronounced GOD-o with an emphatically unambiguous symbolic reference to god attributed to the title. For some reason, this pronunciation and interpretation has been confined to Britain, but it has been the norm there arguably since the first production. It should also come as no shock to a NYT reporter.

I have not yet seen this production, so I’ll have to reserve judgment on the performances. However, Anthony Page’s admission that the rehearsal period was “difficult” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Bill Irwin was excellent as Lucky in the Robin WIlliams – Steve Martin Lincoln Center production, and, presumably, he brings the same talent to Gogo. But, when I first heard about the John Goodman and Nathan Lane casting I feared a mug-off, which some of the writers on this thread have noted. I wouldn’t agree with #13 that the play is actor-proof.

Mark April 30, 2009 · 8:25 pm

#15, I just find it strange that Beckett created a name with an intentionally French spelling (otherwise we’d all be pronouncing the “T”, on either side of the Atlantic) and then insisted on a typically British/Irish mispronunciation of it. No suggestion of an “Anglo conspiracy” intended–I’m just noting that GOD-dough is, technically, the “wrong” way to pronounce a two-syllable French word spelled G-O-D-O-T. If he’d just dropped the “T” (as in “boyo”) Americans wouldn’t make the “mistake” of pronouncing it correctly as a French name. Not that Beckett cares anymore. I think.

Bobby April 30, 2009 · 8:26 pm

Listen-up, all you cool cats and kitties: I like Tom’s “boyo” reference, but would also like to submit “Daddy-o” as a slang-of-the-times, and as good a reference to Godot’s primal significance in the play as any I can imagine: our Father Who must be somewhere nearby, Who is surely aware of us and Who surely will come, or send for us, Who gives our lives purpose and meaning … This hipster’s interpretation certainly adds to an appreciation of Lucky’s speech.

chasgoose April 30, 2009 · 8:34 pm

Yeah I’m pretty sure that pronouncing it GODot is a British bastardization of the original French text. Usually the GODot pronunciation is used by directors as a lazy way to make a connection between the character of Godot and God that Beckett never wanted made that explicit.

Also I could swear that Beckett himself frowned upon the GODot pronunciation.

Typical Brits blaming everything on the Americans.

Bobby April 30, 2009 · 8:40 pm

Hey, Peter. How’s this?

Re: Lucky’s speech and “divine athambia”

this is quoted from //www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=15146

review of James Warren, Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: An Archaeology of Ataraxia, by Jeffrey S. Purinton
According to Clement, “Democritus … identifies the telos as euthymia, which he also terms euestô … . Hecateus says that it is autarkeia, Apollodotus of Cyzicus psychagôgia — and similarly Nausiphanes says akataplêxia, which he claims is the same as what Democritus called athambia. Further, Diotimus [takes as the goal] the completeness of goods, which he said is termed euestô.” Are these all names for the same thing? Eventually Warren will argue that they are not.
//ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2002/2002-10-01.html

What definition should you give for “athambia”?
I like “absence of pain in the soul”.

Lucky April 30, 2009 · 8:53 pm

If you listen carefully to the pronunciations of the other names in Beckett’s play (DEE-dee, GO-go, POT-zo) GOD-oh is the only pronunciation that makes any sense; it is the only one that belongs to the same world. Every play is a foreign country, we must listen and learn its own quite specific music.

boy(o) April 30, 2009 · 9:08 pm

Chasgoose: you should check out the performance of GOD -dough by the Gate Theatre of Dublin recorded on the Beckett on Film DVD collection. All of the productions were authorized by the Beckett estate, and the name in question was certainly pronounced GOD-dough just as Beckett himself pronounced it.

David Gerstein May 1, 2009 · 12:27 am

To appreciate Beckett’s plays knowing some stuff can’t hurt to be sure but above all you need to be able to hear.. .these are more musical scores than works of letters……they are as mysterious and as warmly immediate as is fellow feeling …. I have been weeping and laughing to this music for close to 50 years..nothing wrong with erudition but it something else that’s got the swing.

Neil May 1, 2009 · 5:52 am

As I hear it, Beckett neither intended Godot to be a reference to God, and in fact later regretted pciking the name because people constantly made that inference. The origin of the name was this (or at least this is the story I heard):
A young Sam Beckett was staying in a French town where the Tour De France was passing through. One of the cyclists was a man named Godot, who was notorious for always finishing last of the pack by a mile. So Sam is walking through the town one late evening, after the rest of the cyclists have long come and gone, and he sees two old tramps sitting by the side of the road.
He asks them what they’re doing, and one of the tramps replies wearily;
“Monsiuer, nous attendons Godot.”
Or so I heard it told.

Annab May 1, 2009 · 9:46 am

Having read and studied this play in my academic career many times I am always amused at people such as #11 who insist that the religious reference in “GOD-ot” has no significance in “the original French.” What, did Samuel Beckett somehow forget his native toungue when he moved to Paris?