All That Fall as "a Play for Radio"

All That Fall as "a Play for Radio" THOMAS F. VAN LAAN In a letter dated August 27, 1957, Samuel Beckett wrote to his American publisher, objecting to an attempt to stage a production of All That Fall in a New York theater: All That Fall is a specifically radio play, or rather radio text, for voices, not bodies. I have already refused to have it "staged" and I cannot think ofit in such terms. A perfectly straight reading before an audience seems to me just barely legitimate, though even on this score I have my doubts. But I am absolutely opposed to any form of adaptation with a view to its conversion into "theatre." It is no more theatre than End-Game is radio and to "act" it is to kill it. Even the reduced visual dimension it will receive from the simplest and most static ofreadings [ '" ] will be destructive of whatever quality it may have and which depends on the whole thing's coming out ofthe dark. [ ... ] [T]he thought of All That Fall on a stage, however discreetly, is intolerable to me. I Beckett was too late to prevent the production in question, for permission had already been granted, but not too late to keep it from becoming more than a mere reading or to prompt the shelving of plans to move it to Broadway should it prove successful. In subsequent years, Beckett relaxed his absolute opposition to any kind of staging of All That Fall, and there have been numerous readings, but he never abandoned his insistence that these productions should avoid any attempt to translate his "radio text" into a theatre piece, particularly a naturalistic one.2 Even Kenneth Tynan and Laurence Olivier - to their considerable shock - were refused permission by Beckett when, in 1968, they decided to stage what they believed to be a perfect vehicle for Olivier and Joan Plowright.3 All That Fall, which was written in 1956 and first presented on the BBC Third Programme on January 13, 1957, was undertaken in response to an invitation from John Morris, the Controller ofthe Third Programme, to write a All That Fall as "a Play for Radio" 39 play for the BBC, and it was Beckett's first play written for radio.4 Beckett's statements about AllThat Fall and his efforts to limit theatrical presentation ofit clearly indicate that in writing this radio text Beckett was quite conscious of the specific genre with which he was working. Despite his lack of experience as a practitioner in the medium, Beckett was not simply providing a new play to the BBC so that it might benefit from his rising fame, but genuinely attempting to create a playfor radio. Beckett's view ofAll That Fall- a view that is borne out by the work itself - makes clear that interpretation of it must take into account its condition as a radio text, must see this condition as an essential aspect of its nature and meaning. Curiously, the bulk of the existing commentary on All That Fall pays little attention to - and often completely ignores - this central fact ofthe play.5 Most of this commentary is concerned with defining the themes dramatized by the narrative and demonstrating the thematic links between this work and Beckett's other writings.6 And these links are unmistakable. The commentators have noticed that All That Fall has many more characters than is typical of Beckett, that it is seemingly more naturalistic, and that it is more intricately plotted. But they have also noticed its central concern with a number of familiar Beckett preoccupations: the sense of diminishment and imminent ending, which is conveyed through the ages and physical conditions of Dan and Maddy Rooney and the long list of those who have lost one or more of their faculties or their vital parts or are simply "No better" or "No worse" (p. 34);7 the inevitability, omnipresence, and oppressiveness of death, as in the cases of little Minnie Rooney, the child who, according to her doctor, "had never been really born" (p. 84), and the little child who falls from the train under the wheels; the precariousness of identity when the...