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ANITA RÁKÓCZY by the same play with hands and fingers: a strongly lit X-ray of his spine and ribs become visible, some ribs broken, and a red rose lying in front of it, as if on a gravestone. Ihirdly, W2 opens her door so that we can see her oversized anatomical heart inside, the artery and vein fondled by her delicate fingers. Finally, a choreographed dance of the six hands begins as they roam around, in a frenzy of post-mortem exploration, the compartments of their own urns and the urn(s) that they can reach: the one(s) next to them, that of the beloved(s). Zsófia Bird recalls about the premiere that The director, Gabor Tompa has given us a game to play, which the Budapest audiences, unaware of other possibilities, attempt to play according to their own rules. However, this does not work, as what we see or what we would like to see is not a film history quiz show, not a crime story, a necrophiliac fooling around ora bloody drama of love. Well, what is it then? Gabor Tompa’s theatre is a language for us to learn if we wish to become involved; the original, sovereign language of the absurd.*! ENDGAME: FATHERS AND SONS” The latest Hungarian-language production of Endgame opened in Tompa’s direction at the National Theatre, Targu-Mures, Romania, on 13 May 2016. Although Tompa grew up in Targu-Mures, he had not worked there since 1989. When offered the chance to direct a play as a guest-director, he chose Endgame; the opportunity he took was the seventieth anniversary of the National Theatre of Targu-Mures, and over these seventy years this is the very first time that it has staged a Beckett drama. As Tompa argues, “this ice has to break at all costs.”** He intended to direct a play that in a way depicted the problems of the region he once called home: a play about the father-son relationship in the widest possible context.** The set is a closed system of a metallic box that may be an A-bomb shelter or a twenty-first-century torture-chamber where it is fairly easy to wash the blood off the walls. It leaves no marks. There is a small, square-shaped drain-hole on the floor, near the left window, which sometimes serves as a ladder-balancer for Clov. At other times, it probably drains off the water that covers the walls, since, as in Béla Bartök’s Bluebeard’s Castle, the walls of Hamm and Clov’s interior 3! Bird: Play Beckett. An extended version of this section is published in the Journal of Beckett Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2018), 150-153. It is reprinted here by the kind permission of JOBS. Franciska Keresztes: Interview with the Director Gabor Tompa, the Theatre Program of A jdtszma vége, National Theatre, Tärgu-Mures, 13 May 2016, 12. 34 Ibid., 10. +06 +»
