A couple of weeks ago, the signs began appearing on trees and lampposts all over town. I gave them scarcely a second glance, though the words struck a vague chord somewhere at the back of my mind.

Eventually, as the tide of publicity grew, it dawned on me: these are the opening stage directions of Waiting for Godot, and the signs were advertising free performances of the play by the Classical Theatre of Harlem.

The first night we went, it was so popular that we were turned away. But we persisted the next night, and were rewarded by one of the finest theatrical experiences I've ever been privileged to enjoy.

The setting could not have been more poignant: outdoors in the Lower Ninth ward, at a crossroads, just a few hundred yards from where the Industrial Canal levees broke.

The Lower Ninth, much of it several feet below sea level, was almost literally wiped off the map by the flooding. It was already one of the country's most poverty-stricken areas, and 98 percent of the people were black, leading conspiracy theorists to mutter, perhaps with some justice, that this part of town is low on the recovery agenda.

Where many other districts of New Orleans are now a bustling cacophony of bulldozers and jackhammers as reconstruction money starts to find its way into people's bank accounts, here all is silent. The streets are empty, the shattered houses are fast succumbing to the weeds, and there is talk of turning the area into floodplains or golf courses. This is what the world will look like when civilisation ends.

Which makes it a perfect setting for Godot, and I don't think I've ever believed in a play so much. I felt I was watching a real drama unfold before my eyes, and I cared deeply about the characters.

I'd seen the play once, and read it once, and what I remembered was the stifling sense of claustrophobia. It's as though the action takes place inside a seamless box - we can't be sure what, if anything, exists outside, because the characters' memories and perceptions of it are so flimsy and fragmented.

But this was outdoors, and real life was all too obviously happening not much more than a stone's throw away. Birds twittered, car stereos thudded, and a man shouted dementedly in the distance. There was a powerful echo, and if Pozzo yelled loudly enough into his loudhailer we heard every word bouncing back at us.

This time, I had a strong sense that the possibility of redemption lay just beyond arm's length, but the characters were so intent on waiting for God to save them that they failed to reach out and grasp the opportunity being presented to them.

Godot is a tragicomedy, and the cast milked it for every laugh and every surreptitious tear. It was a wonderful production, and yet in one sense it failed.

Before the play started, we were asked if any of us had been residents of the district. Out of 550 people, only a couple of dozen raised their hands. And later, as one cast member took a short cut through the audience, he ad-libbed: 'What a lot of white faces here in the Lower Ninth'.

Part of the purpose of tonight was to tell people here that the world still cared about them. Another part must surely have been to encourage poor black people to experience something that might otherwise have passed them by. Three of the five actors were black, their body language was black, and they inserted little black in-jokes into the script.

While we were waiting in line, an African American guy in his forties came up and asked me what was going on. I told him it was one of the greatest plays ever written.

What's it about, he asked me. But as soon as I started summarising the plot, if you can call it that, I felt stupid and knew that I'd lost him.

I heard a rumour there was free food, and I'm hungry, he said.

I told him there had been free food the previous night, but there was none on offer now. He looked disappointed, and disappeared into the darkness.

Afterwards, we stood on a dark street corner and phoned for a taxi, but like Godot it never came. Eventually, we flagged one down.

'It's lucky I happened to be passing,' the driver told us. 'The reason your cab never showed was probably because you've got the projects just round the corner, and a lot of drivers won't come here because it's all black people.'

He was from Pakistan, but he was the third taxi driver I've encountered here with less than wholesome views about the people who make up 80 percent of the population .

They always start their sentences: 'I'm not racist, but'. One, just a few nights ago, told me that the reason I sometimes found it hard to get things done in New Orleans was not because the city was recovering from a catastrophe, but because all the jobs were occupied by shiftless, inefficient blacks. Another asked whether I planned to live in this country permanently. I hoped so, I said, but there were a lot of hoops to jump through first.

'They should just let people like you in automatically,' he told me. 'You're just what this country needs. You're respectable, and you're white.'