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MÁRTON MESTERHÁZI simplification of "soft-loud-slow-fast"" does not apply either. Ihe theatre of the absurd at its best means composite writing, from genuine tragedy to slapstick farce; hence it demands of the actor full knowledge and possession of his/her art. Mind you, even such a minute detail as delivering a punch-line properly reguires a number of professional gualities. Mrs Rooneys line, for example, "Minnie, little Minnie!”’* should have sincere pathos and emotion; her sobs in the scene with Mr Tyler must be real sobs of self-pity. The scene of her getting into Mr Slocum’s car must develop into a full-fledged farce until the climax “I’m in!” This means that a number of professional tricks are required, such as rhythm, pauses, shifts (speedy switches from one mood into another) making appropriate noises of effort, adding just a little bit of eroticism. Mr Rooney should be serious, and not “funny,” in his philosophical tirade about the number of the steps; and his line “It is a thing I carry about with me!” should be filled with violent fury and remorse, though the actor will not (and need not) know what the bloody thing is. These are just a few examples of what performing Beckett demands of actors. As actors performing Beckett, Mária Sulyok and Tamas Major were geniuses; but everybody at the mic delivered their parts perfectly. Strange as it may seem, I cannot remember special — memorable — moments of the recording sessions. We were awed by the characters the actors created; I kept looking at my copy of the script and praying to God for them not to make an error (my job was to stop them if they did). This tense atmosphere of creative satisfaction made us forget another order of Gabor’s. To this day Iam unable to guess what drove him to such idiocy. Caution? Worry? Need for another fig-leaf? He demanded that we should use the “noises” of “the Czech comrades,” and managed — through Foreign Relations — to procure them. Now, “noises” (I call them that for the time being) are provided by a special member of the staff; then, having been used, they are thrown away as waste, or if good enough, they are taken back to the shelf. Evidently, the Czech team did not bother to look for the original material; knowing (just as well as ourselves) that the order or request was idiotic, they copied the “noises” from the finished recording and sent them to Hungarian Radio Foreign Relations. Whatever has been recorded on tape loses some of its quality when copied. The Czech colleagues sent us their copied-copied “noises” — too short for fade ins/outs at that — and we copied them to the final tape during editing (“playing together”). I cannot say we were happy with the result. All That Fall was broadcast on 11 January 1968, as Late Night Radio Theatre. Radio News of the same week offered my fig-leaflines as propaganda. Deplorable lines, when I read them today. 15 A veteran actor told Max Reinhardt once (se non e vero, e ben trovato), “Do not analyse, Sir, tell us to go soft, loud, slow, fast, and we shall deliver the character." 16 Samuel Beckett: Collected Shorter Plays, London, Faber and Faber, 1984, 14. * 134
