WAITING
FOR GODOT
By Samuel Beckett
UC Irvine
Fall 20110
This production included lines that Beckett had dropped from
the French edition which, as with Cohen’s 2008 production
of Endgame, the author had invited Cohen “to put them
back if you wish,” The production was created in accordance
with these adjustments, and also in light of Cohen’s essay
“Pozzo’s Knook,” published in Modern Drama
earlier in the year (read the article in the Articles and Reviews
section on this website), which brought to public attention
Cohen’s recent discovery that Lucky, Pozzo’s “Knook,”
was directly based on the family of Knooks (forest elves) that
tended Santa’s Reindeer in L. Frank Baum’s popular
children’s novel, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
(1902). Cohen’s production, set in the midst of a winter
snowfall, was praised as “mesmerizing… magnificence”
by the New University and rated a “magnificent production”
by the Daily Pilot; at year’s end the latter newspaper
named it “the most resoundingly accomplished show of the
year” for all non-professional productions in Orange County.
