Theater News

Yiddish Waiting for Godot to Give Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart Some Competition

The world premiere will open September 22, one month before previews begin for the Broadway production of the play.

Bethany Rickwald
New York City

Moshe Yassur
Moshe Yassur
(courtesy of The New Yiddish Rep)

The New Yiddish Rep is set to present the world’s first all-Yiddish production of Waiting for Godot. The company, in conjunction with Castillo Theatre, will stage this world premiere from September 20-October 13, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Waiting for Godot‘s Paris premiere in January 1953. Moshe Yassur will direct, with an authorized translation by Shane Baker.

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play that follows main characters Vladimir and Estragon as the pair spend an interminable amount of time waiting for the arrival of a person named Godot. The New Yiddish Rep’s version will be performed in Yiddish with English and Russian supertitles.

“[This production] is particularly Jewish,” Yassur explains. “The characters are Holocaust survivors, they are facing the unimaginable, and they are waiting for answers that may not come. Yiddish, the language of laughter and tears, captures this sound, this feeling like no other language.”

The cast will feature Shane Baker, Avi Hoffman, Nicholas Jenkins, David Mandelbaum, and Rafael Goldwaser.