Fifty years ago tonight, the theatrical world was turned upside down. Peter Hall’s production of Sam Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered in London. I’ve always thought that only Ken Tynan did it justice, in his Observer review. This is what he wrote:

By all the known criteria, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a dramatic vacuum. Pity the critic who seeks a chink in its armour, for it is all chink. It has no plot, no climax, no denouement; no beginning, no middle, and no end. Unavoidably, it has a situation, and it might be accused of having suspense, since it deals with the impatience of two tramps, waiting beneath a tree for a cryptic Mr Godot to keep his appointment with them; but the situation is never developed, and a glance at the programme shows that Mr Godot is not going to arrive. Waiting for Godot frankly jettisons everything by which we recognise theatre. It arrives at the custom-house, as it were, with no luggage, no passport, and nothing to declare; yet it gets through, as might a pilgrim from Mars. It does this, I believe, by appealing to a definition of drama much more fundamental than anything in the books. A play, it asserts and proves, is basically a means of spending two hours in the dark without being bored.

Peter Hall has written a nice piece about the premiere in today’s Guardian. He compares Godot with that other iconic play, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.

Look Back in Anger was a play formed by the careful naturalism of the 30s and the craft beloved by the old repertory theatres. It now looks dated and prolix because it uses the convention of the old well-made play. I think that my generation heard more political revolution in it than was actually there – largely because we desperately needed to.

By contrast, Waiting for Godot hasn’t dated at all. It remains a masterpiece transcending all barriers and all nationalities. And it could have been written today: there is nothing of the 50s about it. It is the start of modern drama and it gave the theatre back its metaphorical power.

Godot challenged and then removed 100 years of literal naturalism where a room could only be considered a room if it was presented in full detail with the fourth wall removed. Godot provided an empty stage, with a tree and two figures who waited each day and yet had to survive.

It turns out that he was in Barbados after all. I missed the coverage of Robin Cook’s funeral because we were on hols, but wondered why Blair didn’t attend. It seemed to me to be an error of judgement, not to mention a lapse of taste. And of course I laughed at John McCririck’s crack about the Prime Minister “snortling in his paid-for holiday home”. But according to the Belfast Telegraph, the Cook family asked Blair not to come because they didn’t want the funeral turning into a military and security circus. So it looks as though I was wrong — as indeed was McCririck. Nice word “snortling”, though. Must remember it.

Here’s an interesting development. According to The Register,

Amazon.com is to start selling electronic downloads of short stories, single chapters of books and even single scenes from novels as part of a new section called Amazon Shorts.

At the moment this looks like being a US-only deal, and each download will cost just 49 cents.

The idea is that readers will be able to sample new authors at very little cost, or buy updates to books they already own or to read alternative endings to favourite stories.

This is a great idea. No excessive DRM either.

The word ‘podcast’ has entered the Oxford English Dictionary. Ben Hammersley, who first coined it, is understandably chuffed.

Wonderful post by Andrew Brown…

Marlborough College is trying to expel a boy merely for being thick and unpleasant. Perhaps you had to have been there to understand how absurd this is. It’s like being thrown out of Big Brother for being a shallow exhibitionist.

This is a school which has been hated by any pupil of any intelligence or sensibility for as long as it has existed. When I was there, the punishment for new boys thought clever was a kind of gang rape involving boot polish and sometimes sodomy with a broomstick. At the time, I would have welcomed, perhaps incredulously, any sign that the authorities thought anyone could be too stupid or too nasty for the school. Now I know better. If the school has shareholders, they should sue it at once for diluting its brand equity. Up until now, to be an Old Marlburian has made a very clear statement about a man — that he is at best a rather pious evangelical Christian, but very probably nastier, more fucked up or more stupid than even the average Anglican bishop. Should this change, no one will know what being an old Marlburian means, and the £22,000 a year that parents pay to brand their children will be entirely wasted.

I’m relieved to read this. I’ve always thought that parents who send their kids to public schools (i.e. ‘private’ schools in UK parlance) must hate them. Nice to have it confirmed.

Update: In a thoughtful comment on Andrew’s post, David Smith complains that I have “repeated the tired rubbish about children at boarding schools being hated by their parents”. Hmmm… I’m sure there are some occupational circumstances which might mean that a child is better being sent away to school, but those aside I’ve never seen the point of having children and then being separated from them in their formative years. And I’ve seen quite a few public schoolboys in my time who were clearly disliked — and in one or two cases even loathed — by their parents. Sending them away was just a socially-acceptable way of dodging parental responsibility. Or perhaps it was a way of making sure that they didn’t strangle their offspring.

Kerouac redux. Two guys quit their corporate jobs and decided they want to see America. So they decided to make a road journey from Seattle to Boston — on a Segway. And make a film about it. See the trailer and wonder.

Well, well. BBC Online reports that

A nun is protesting outside Lincoln Cathedral over the filming of the movie of controversial bestselling book the Da Vinci Code.

Plans for a .xxx top-level domain (effectively a virtually red-light district) were supposed to be finalised by ICANN this week. But according to Good Morning Silicon Valley, they’ve hit a snag.

In a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, asked that approval of the planned domain be postponed pending further study. “The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children,” Gallagher wrote. “The volume of correspondence opposed to creation of a .xxx (domain) is unprecedented. Given the extent of the negative reaction, I request that the board (provide) adequate additional time for these concerns to be voiced and addressed before any additional action takes place.” The Department of Commerce isn’t the only agency suggesting ICANN put the brakes on .xxx. ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee recommended a similar course recently as well, noting a “strong sense of discomfort” over the domain in a number of its member countries. All of this leaves ICANN in a difficult position and one for which the agency has no one to blame but itself.

Apropos my earlier observations about the film, how about this from the Lincolnshire Echo?

A Corner of Lincoln was today being transformed into a Hollywood film set as the stars of The Da Vinci Code arrived.

Film-makers have moved into Lincoln Cathedral to begin filming the highly anticipated blockbuster based on Dan Brown’s best-selling novel.

This morning big name stars Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Ian McKellen were ushered into the cathedral under the tightest security to start filming.

Excitement in Lincoln is running high.

Butcher Kenny Roberts, owner of Elite Meats in Bailgate, said having the film crew visit Lincoln was a real plus for him.

“I’m doing the catering for 400 of the crew each day,” he said.

“Somebody called me last week to place an order.

“I’ll be supplying 400 individual pork pies, 300 Lincolnshire sausages and 500 rashers of bacon for the bacon sarnies. It’s a real coup for me.”

For weeks, it seems, an area of the cathedral has been slowly transformed into a section of Westminster Abbey. The scenes to be shot in the cathedral come towards the end of the film, when characters played by Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou finally discover the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton.

Thanks to Dave Hill for the link, though what he’s doing reading the Lincolnshire Echo I cannot imagine! And can it really be the case that it takes 400 people to shoot a few scenes? No wonder Hollywood’s in trouble.