"No, Donny, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of. "

John Goodman and Nathan Lane will be playing Pozzo and Estragon, respectively, in a Broadway production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” The material of the enigmatic "tragicomedy in two acts" is plodding (infamously critiqued as "Nothing happens, twice.") and existentially bleak but I think the tyrannical, cruel, farcical and pathetic role of Pozzo will suit John Goodman well as he has shown himself to be adroit at playing the fool and the bully (see O Brother, Where Art Thou?). It has the potential to be excellent and I would go just to hear him say

"...one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."

Although I do like to point out that, seven years earlier, Vladimir Nabokov opened his autobiography, "Speak, Memory" with the awkwardly (for Beckett) similar words:

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour)."

Put either way, the effect is chilling.