Samuel Beckett - Seven Radio Plays

Broadcast 10-16th April 2006 on RT Radio 1 as part of the Beckett 100

celebration.

Website: http://www.rte.ie/beckett100/radio_plays.html

Plays directed by Julie Hegarty Lovett.

Produced by Aidan Matthews.

1. Embers

Henry: Conor Lovett

Ada: Olwyn Fourere

Music and riding master: Louis Lovett

Addy: Ally N Chiarin

Origional Music by Paul Clarke

Size: 34.3 MB

Bit Rate: 128 KBps

Duration: 00:37:32

Encoder: Lame 3.82

2. Words and Music

Croak: John Kavanagh

Words: Conor Lovett

Size: 29.6 MB

Bit Rate: 128 KBps

Duration: 00:32:35

Encoder: Lame 3.82

3. Rough for Radio I

He: Michael West

She: Annie Ryan

Origional Music by Paul Clarke

Size: 10.8 MB

Bit Rate: 128 KBps

Duration: 00:11:48

Encoder: Gogo (after 3.0)

4. Rough for Radio II

Animator: Mark ORegan

Stenographer: Ally N Chiarin

Fox: Conor Lovett

Size: 23.0 MB

Bit Rate: 128 KBps

Duration: 00:25:12
Encoder: Lame 3.82

5. Cascando

Opener: Mark ORegan

Voice: Conor Lovett

Origional Music by Paul Clarke

Size: 17.4 MB

Bit Rate: 128 KBps

Duration: 00:19:00

Encoder: Lame 3.82

6. The Old Tune

(Adapted by Beckett from the radio play La Manivelle by Robert Pinget.)

Gorman: David Kelly

Cream: John Kavanagh

Size: 25.5 MB

Bit Rate: 128 KBps

Duration: 00:27:55

Encoder: Lame 3.82

7. All that Fall

Mrs Rooney: Anna Manahan

Mr. Rooney: David Kelly

Christy & Mr. Barrel: Denis Conway

Mr. Tyler: Conor Lovett

Mr. Slocum: John Kavanagh

Tommy: Louis Lovett

Miss Fitt: Katherine Walsh

Female voice: Ally N Chiarin

Dolly: Ruby Hegarty Lovett

Jerry: Judy Hegarty Lovett

Size: 66.2 MB

Bit Rate: 128 KBps

Duration: 01:12:23

Encoder: Lame 3.82

INTRODUCTION TO PLAYS FROM WEBSITE

RT Radio 1 in association with Gare St Lazare Players Ireland will broadcast Becketts
seven radio plays. Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett and produced for RT by Aidan
Mathews, the plays feature Ally N Chiarin, Denis Conway, John Kavanagh, David Kelly,
Conor Lovett, Louis Lovett, Anna Manahan, Mark ORegan, Annie Ryan, Catherine Walsh
and Michael West. Original music for Cascando, Words and Music and Rough For
Radio 1 has been composed by Paul Clark.

EMBERS
Henry sits on the strand, tormented by the sound of the sea. He talks to his drowned
father, who doesn't answer, and to his wife, Ada, who does. Throughout it all the sound
of the sea weaves in and out, almost like a third character. Though Embers was written
in 1958-1959, in 1986 Samuel Beckett could describe the location, Killiney Beach, near
the Foxrock house in which he spent his youth, and the sound of the sea with exacting
detail.
WORDS AND MUSIC
Words and Music was written by Samuel Beckett in 1962. In this piece, two characters
entitled Words (or Bob) and Music (Joe) work together and against each other in order to
produce songs, musical interludes, and lyric poetry. To some extent, they are led by a
third character, Croak, who, as the name suggests, exists somewhere in between sound
and sense. The lyrical nature of this short piece ranges from the melancholic to the
gently comic.

This play is often understood as being "about" the agonizing difficulties of the creative
process itself.

ROUGH FOR RADIO I

(1961: published in English as Sketch for Radio Play, 1976)Rough for Radio I is a radio
play that uses music to explore the isolation and confinement between a man and
woman.

ROUGH FOR RADIO II

(1961: published in English as Rough for Radio in 1976)An Animator, assisted by a
Stenographer and the whip wielding mute character, Dick, has the task of eliciting from
Fox some unknown testimony of unknown significance. If it could but be achieved then
"tomorrow, who knows, we may be free!".

CASCANDO
In this play, an Opener "opens" and "closes" two characters: Voice desperately promises
"this time" to tell a story he can finish; and Music equally struggles to create a finished
composition. The play increases in intensity but you'll have to tune in to RT Radio 1 to
find out if they manage to finish or not.

THE OLD TUNE

The Old Tune is not an original work by Samuel Beckett. It is an adaptation or what
could perhaps be best described as the transfer of the original, a radio play entitled La
Manivelle by Robert Pinget (*1919), into an Irish idiom.
The characters, Cream and Gorman contradict each other continually: Their respective
memories of people and incidents are widely diverging, and their efforts to explain away,
clear up or at least reduce the differences in their remembrances of things past make up
the body of this short play. If one were to isolate a theme it would probably be the
unreliability and the progressive decline of human memory with age.

ALL THAT FALL

Samuel Beckett's first radio play is full of Irish humour and pathos. In it, Maddy Rooney,
seventy years old, "two hundred pounds of unhealty fat", makes her laborious way to
the Boghill railroad station to meet her blind husband, Dan, as a surprise for him on his
birthday. Along the way she meets a comic array of Irish characters. On the retum
home, deluged by neighbourhood children and by rain, they keep their spirits up with a
lively banter, sometimes savage, sometimes heart rendering.