Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
UC Irvine
Fall 2011
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.
