Waiting for Godot
By Samuel Beckett

When Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot exploded on to the London stage 50 years ago, it shocked as many people as it delighted. There had never been a play like it. Two tramps clowning around, joking and arguing, repeating themselves, as they wait through one day and then another, waiting for the mysterious Godot. The combination of music hall, poetry and tension redefined what is possible in theatre, so that Waiting for Godot is now accepted as one of the most significant plays of the 20th century.

Beckett's characters have lost none of their power to fascinate and amuse. This production, directed by the acclaimed theatre and film director, Sean Mathias, has attracted the sort of great actors that the play deserves.

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are both renowned Shakespearean actors at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the West End and on Broadway. They first worked together in Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1977 and more recently in the X-Men film trilogy, as Magneto and Professor X. Each of them has established their own iconic screen persona, as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and as Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard.

Their new partnership with Beckett promises to be the theatre event of the year.