Their conversation veers between silly banalities — Estragon imploring his mate Vladimir to help him get his boot off — witty repartee and deep and meaningful insights into life.

Every now and then one of them suggests it might be a good idea to hang themselves from the tree with their belts, and every now and then Estragon gets bored and suggests they go, to which Vladimir always replies “no”. “We’re waiting for Godot,” is his excuse, though no one ever finds out what or who Godot actually is. And that’s just Act One.

Samuel Beckett, lauded as the most important writer of the 20th century, famously refused to elaborate on what all this “remarkable twaddle” meant, saying that it was up to the audience members to decide for themselves. After two hours, I hadn't a clue.

There is more than a hint that Beckett wanted to show there’s not much more to our squalid human existence except eat, reproduce and die.

Beckett also challenges our perception of reality with this piece of theatre of the absurd, by introducing bizarre elements like a slave-driver who struts on to the scene with his chained-up charge in tow. It's odd, it's baffling, and it doesn't really hang with what's going on before or after.

Things are constantly changing. One minute the slave-driver, Pozzo, is perceived as a nasty piece of work. In a subsequent scene he comes across as a victim. How did that happen?

Director Paul Stacey - never a man to shrink from a challenge - shows great courage in bringing such an extraordinary piece of theatre to Reading. Rick Romero, who has trod the boards here several times in the last two years, is impressive in the lead role of Vladimir, and Reading stalwart Stephen Macaulay is larger than life with his booming Brian Blessed-type voice as Pozzo.

By the end of this play I was no more clear as to what it all meant than at the beginning... but that seems to be the point. Another thought-provoking triumph from this classy theatre outfit.