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SHOES THAT ARE LEFT BEHIND: GÁBOR TOMPAS BECKETT HERITAGE
strength and visionary revelation. When one first catches sight of her in torn
jeans at the end of Pozzos (Levente Nemes) rope, it is noticeable that she has
developed a special motion score for the character: moving with great speed,
her neck keeps twitching, nodding repeatedly. She creates the impression
that she is a highly organized marionette whose loose body parts have lives
of their own, so while trying to be in full control, she has lost control over
her own self, just like Winnie. Ihe scene in which, for a considerable length
of time, Lucky holds the bags raised up from the ground instead of resting
(Vladimir and Estragon wonder why she does not put them down) might
also be interpreted as losing control and with great effort regaining it again.
As Lucky begins to sag slowly, in the “rhythm of one sleeping on his feet,"
she lets go of the bags, so they drop down on the floor; but an instant later she
awakes, grabs the handles of the bags and lifts them up in haste, in correction
of her careless behavior. Tompa renders Lucky’s gentle going to sleep with
such subtlety and precise pace that her brief mime with the bags becomes the
focal point of attention.
Lucky is located in the center of the stage for much of the production,
the most memorable example of which is her monologue. As opposed to
the rapid, almost rhythmic, game-like tempo of Vladimir and Estragon’s
dialogue, Lucky begins her speech first in silence with only her lips moving,
trying to form syllables, words that are just being born or learnt again.
When she starts to speak, her delivery is slow and steady, by no means the
unfathomable, speedy flow of words that other Luckys often tend to produce.
Rather, it sounds like a prophecy, scanned, gradually accelerating, with her
standing straight, right in the middle of the stage, and looking up towards the
sky all the while. Whether her gaze signifies the lost connection and makes
her a messenger in trance or whether the look in her eyes shows nothing but
accusation is for the audience to decide.
Tompa’s fascination with electronic gadgets found its way into this
production through the staging of the boy. In both acts, when the time comes,
the discarded and unplugged TV-set on top of the shoes suddenly turns itself
on, and the boy appears on the screen as if in a live broadcast. Tompa recalls
that “my idea was that the child follows Vladimir and Estragon’s walks in
front of the television and answers them in such a way as if he has seen their
every movement. And at the moment when Vladimir asks, ‘You did see us,
didn’t you?’,”’ the image of the boy disappears and only the white, static
screen remains instead of him.”” His angelic face, like Lucky’s gaze, initiates
at least two ways of interpretation that seemingly differ but still unite in this
theatrical metaphor: Godot’s herald, arriving through a TV screen, is meant to
20 Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works, 26.
2 Tbid., 50.
22 Ichim: Tompa Gábor, 185.
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