Waiting for Godot is probably the best, and certainly the most celebrated, play of the avant-garde school. Before its first night in Paris in 1953, the avant-garde theatre was essentially a fringe (some would say "freak") movement. Godot has changed all that. Thanks to its immense success all over the world the avant-garde theatre has been accepted as a fully fledged member of the theatrical establishment. It has demonstrated, more than any other play written in the modern idiom, that the oblique style, developed by the new playwrights, is no affectation, but a means of unravelling the complexities of existence, complexities undreamed of in the old days.

Godot is a symbolic play which probably means many things to many people. It is existentialist in that it deals with existence. It is religious. It is an exaltation of mankind prostrate at the foot of a God that failed. But above all it is theatre, and on the strength of its dramatic force it should stand or fall.