Note on the Schiller-Theater West Berlin 1975 Production

Abstract

In his production of Waiting for Godot at the Schiller-Theater, West Berlin, Beckett revealed the play as a thing of haunting beauty, droll and deeply sad at once, a tragicomedy, exactly as he describes it in the text. Those who saw it in Berlin or, as I myself did in London when it came to the Royal Court Theatre the next year, would surely feel that Peter Hall (who knew from experience the difficulties) had found the right words when he praised the ‘Absolute precision, clarity, hardness. No sentimentality, no indulgence, no pretension’.¹¹ Bareness and purity are other words that come to mind, yet along with these austere qualities went a sense of fun and tenderness, liable to break out at any minute like a sudden, unexpected smile.