When Samuel Beckett had his En Attendant Godot produced at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris, he really started something. I saw the play there in 1953, and again in London (1955) and in New York (1956) as Waiting for Godot. Meanwhile it had toured France and Germany and been translated into several other languages. It was a far greater success than any of Beckett's previous works had been—and his first attempt to write for the stage.

The most immediately striking thing about the play was its originality. Obviously avant-garde, it nevertheless retained all the seediness of a down-at-the-heel realism. On the surface it seemed simple almost to the point of idiocy, yet it implied all the complications that human intelligence has been able to create for itself. And it created an image of man's longing for ideal relationships with himself, with other men, with God, only to defile the image by suggesting doubts.