Irish Examiner view: Waiting for Godot falls foul of prevailing nostrums

David Rawle performing the role of Lucky in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Picture: Mark Stedman

Those of a sceptical, or world-weary, mien may draw amusement or solace from two encounters between two of Ireland’s greatest writers and the anxieties and preoccupations of today’s young, sometimes easily offended, students.

At the University of Glasgow lecturers have provided classes studying James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses with trigger warnings for its “explicit” references to “sexual matters” and the possibly upsetting “language and attitudes” purveyed by the author.

Meanwhile the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has cancelled performances of Waiting for Godot after the director Oisín Moyne from Donegal auditioned men only for his production, a requirement stipulated by the unbending rules of the Beckett estate whose role it is to maintain the notoriously strict guidelines and stage directions laid down by the Dublin master of theatre. 

Its press officer said: “Times have changed. We as a university stand for an open inclusive community where it is not appropriate to exclude others, on any basis.” 

It’s entitled to that view, just as the Beckett estate is entitled not to have the absurdist masterwork rewritten and revised to match prevailing nostrums. 

The University of Groningen will just have to wait for Godot. That could take until 2059.