Tragi-comic
Sir: Was Peter Jenkins being disingenuous or plain stupid when he wrote (28 February) of Messrs Ntshona and Kani 'infecting' Waiting for Godot with `tragi-comic resignation' in the production Donald Howarth has brought to the Old Vie from Cape Town? Mr Jenkins's non-review concludes, self-approbatingly: 'Whether they or the production make any sense of the play I cannot say for I have never been able to make any sense of it myself and I confess to wicked hopes that Beckett may yet turn out to be not a genius but a charlatan.' Since the play is explicitly sub-titled 'A Tragicomedy' by Beckett, it seems to me to be Mr Jenkins who, in trying to pass off his incomprehension as criticism, 'turns out' to be the charlatan.
Michael Horovitz
Piedmont, Bisley, Stroud, Gloucestershire
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