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SHOES THAT ARE LEFT BEHIND: GÁBOR TOMPAS BECKETT HERITAGE
Hungarian theatre culture would dictate, Tompa treats Beckett’s plays with
respect on the textual level, considering them as musical scores in terms
of pace, rhythm, and structure. However, he has grown to appreciate and
keep Beckett’s stage instructions only with time, as in his 1979 Happy Days,
despite Beckett’s original intentions, he cast in the role of Winnie the young
actress Aurora Leonte, only twenty-six years of age but with exceptionally
strong theatrical presence. As Tompa recalls in his interview series with the
Romanian theatre critic Florica Ichim:
To me, Winnie’s rebellion, as she by no means resigned herself to her situation, was
at the same time the rebellion of my generation as well, because of our freedom that
was buried, trampled into the ground. Although the production was interesting, it
drifted away considerably from the Beckettian intention. But we were young and
of course we were looking for plays [...] that dealt with the relationship between
the individual and the authorities. In the 90s, many of my directions tackled this
problem, though not openly, not on the level of cheap political actualization. My
Beckett production at the Academy was one of the first manifestations of this
endeavor. I realized that I had nowhere near exhausted the richness, the multiple
layers of the Beckettian text, I had not revealed its profound depths. I was twenty¬
one, twenty-two years old.*
Tompa’s Happy Days was a one-hour show that later toured in the Teatrul
Foarte Mic’ and in Tärgu Mures. The set followed Tompa’s vision. Throughout
the production, Aurora sat on a chair at a table surrounded by various
objects: mattresses, planks, rags, pieces of junk — “the discarded props of
civilization.” There was a small car on stage, a miniature Rolls Royce that
Tompa had borrowed from a friend of his mother for the premiere.’ It was a
special toy car made of Bakelite with a little engine, gilded metallic wheels
and a spare tire at the back which one could turn and thus, from a built¬
in music box, a song from the 1920s — similar to Tea for Two — started
to sound. The car was also a brandy-glass holder, with the delicate glasses
carefully lined up on the back seat. As Tompa recalls, this stage prop was
involved in the most beautiful moment of Happy Days, which he remembers
fondly to this day.’ It is a scene in which Winnie “confuses objects and she
wants to clean her teeth with the revolver, do her hair with the toothbrush
: Florica Ichim: Tompa Gábor: Beszélgetések hat felvonásban [Gabor Tompa. Conversations
in Six Acts], Csíkszereda, Pallas-Akadémia Könyvkiadó, 2004, 189. Translated into English
from Eva Väli’s Hungarian translation.
Foarte Mic [Very Small Theatre], a repertory theatre in Bucharest.
Ichim: Tompa Gabor, 189.
Public performance at the Academy at the end ofterm, atype of examination.
Ichim: Tompa Gabor, 189.
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