This shocking play received its perfect interpretation in this televised version. Starring Burgess Meredith as a scheming Didi, Zero Mostel as a flustered Gogo, Kurt Kasznar as pompous Pozzo, and Alvin Epstein as his beleaguered servant, no better production is conceivable for this "tragicomedy," which revolutionized modern theatre and was much responsible for Samuel Beckett's Nobel Prize. In the intimate circle of fellow Irish author James Joyce in Paris, Beckett joined the Resistance and, when he learned that he was soon to be arrested by the Gestapo, he and his wife, Suzanne, fled in a long walk towards Vichy France. This play catalogued their immiseration and the search in farmer's fields for some sort of root vegetable on which they might dine. The Irish Potato Famine of the previous century may have also contributed to a sort of ethnic memory of extreme deprivation, which Beckett ably addresses with mocking humor. All writing is autobiographical and the ability to delineate its universal elements is testimony to Beckett's genius. This production does it due service.