Oldal 90 [90]
OCR
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 twentyone, 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 builtin 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. 0 a a a + 89 «
