Images of Beckett - Index of

understandable. A writer of his meticulousness must achieve the phrase he wants very
quickly as he sets it down on paper, otherwise he crosses it out. But an actor takes weeks
of work to explore and then realise a few minutes of text. 49
In addition, I remember the adamant manner in which Dame Peggy told me
that she and Peter Hall were certainly not going to accept the cut of an entire
page of text that Beckett wanted them to make in the scene in which Winnie’s
parasol goes on fire. And they did not. Beckett also became frustrated with
the awkwardness of working through another director and annoyed by his
differences of view with Dame Peggy. Meeting me after a rehearsal, he spoke
of inventing reasons for leaving early and returning to Paris. 50
The problem derived largely, as Peter Hall suggested, from a failure on
Beckett’s part to appreciate properly the difficulties that an actor or actress
encountered as he or she worked towards a performance. Beckett was also
concerned, sometimes too early, with reproducing the voice that he heard in
his head. Curiously, when faced with the finished product, he often admired
some of the very things that at earlier rehearsals he might well have taken out.
He never liked emotionalism in his plays. But when emotion was used
discreetly and when, perhaps in the wake of the über-marionette, it was
scrupulously controlled, he could accept, even applaud a performance that
incorporated his rhythmical principles but provided a wider emotional range
than he had originally envisaged, or maybe even thought possible or
desirable. As his favourite stage designer, Jocelyn Herbert, suggested to me,
Madeleine Renaud’s Winnie in Oh les beaux jours, for instance, offered
precisely those qualities that Beckett had objected to in the case of Brenda
Bruce – human, lyrical and moving. Yet Beckett adored it. Patrick Magee and
Billie Whitelaw in England, Jean Martin and Roger Blin in France and Horst
Bollmann, Stefan Wigger, Ernst Schroeder and even Martin Held in Germany
were other actors who gave him far more than he asked for, inventing and
bringing that indispensable spark of genius to their performances. For, with
Beckett, as with anyone else, what he wanted in theory was not necessarily
(Left) Madeleine Renaud in Oh les beaux jours, 1969
BECKETT AS DIRECTOR 113