A soldier for uncle Sam

As executor of the Beckett estate, Edward Beckett is repaying his uncle's support for his musical career by staunchly defending the integrity of the work, writes Peter Crawley

In the busy summer of 1964, following three revivals of Endgame, two of Play, and the shooting of Film still to come, Samuel Beckett managed to take a week off. Still committed to his family, when Beckett sat down with his sister-in-law Jean one June evening in the Paris Conservatoire, his only thoughts were for his nephew.

A prodigious talent as a flautist, Edward Beckett, then 21, was expected to win first prize in the concours. Instead, he won nothing and was forced to prolong his studies for another year. His uncle was bitter. "He has more musicality than the rest of the class put together, and by far the finest tone," he wrote approvingly. "But for the gentlemen of the jury these qualities must be of less account than mere mechanical accuracy." One year later, Edward took first prize.
Today, Edward Beckett's clear grey eyes bear the patience of someone used to having his features scrutinised for their likeness to someone else. Tall, softly spoken and silver-haired, Edward balances a career as the principal flautist and founding member of the London Festival Orchestra with his inherited duties as the executor of the notoriously litigious Beckett estate. As the latter, he is keenly aware of the musicality of his uncle's legacy, attuned to its tone and, most censoriously, understands its strict demand for mechanical accuracy.

Growing up in Killiney, Co Dublin, Edward was aware of his uncle Sam, a writer who lived in Paris and made only very occasional visits home. But when Edward's father, Frank, died when the boy was just 11, Samuel became a supportive, encouraging and protective presence; still based in his adopted home of Paris, but a presence nonetheless. The family's finances were few, and when Edward left a degree in engineering to pursue music, his uncle offered all assistance. "Without him, it would have been impossible," recalls Edward.

Once enrolled in the Conservatoire, the young man came to Paris, immersed in music but unfamiliar with literary spheres. Gradually he became aware of two distinct Samuel Becketts: one who belonged to his family, and another who belonged - however reluctantly - to the world.

"Sometimes it got a bit confusing," Edward says. "It took quite a long time to sink in, to know who he was. And it was revealed by so many people."
At a restaurant during one of their weekly dinners, for instance, Samuel might be accosted by somebody in search of a few words, or an explanation, or a photograph.

"There are stories," Edward says, "that if a photographer was paid to take a picture of him, he'd try to buy their picture back. He'd say: 'How much are you getting for this picture?' and he'd offer them double. That's the sort of way he'd go about things; he'd find a gentle way of coping with it."

BECKETT'S LEGENDARY PRIVACY extended to his work; the haunting visions and unsettling amusements for which he left ample instruction and no explanation. Pity the research student or the theatre-goer who approaches his closest relative, determined to penetrate to the heart of Beckett's genius.
"I must be a grave disappointment," Edward almost smiles. He had questions of his own, about the work, its meaning, the origins of an idea or a name. "But you'd be reluctant to ask him a direct question, particularly if you knew he wouldn't be happy or at ease discussing it. The trouble is, if you asked him something, you'd know he'd reply, because of this innate courtesy he had." He sighs. "It's a ridiculous thing and I kick myself now for being so reluctant."
Edward Beckett will not be his uncle's interpreter, but with Samuel's death, in 1989, he has become custodian of his meaning. In the writer's last years, growing weaker and more frail, Beckett told his nephew he intended to make him co-executor of his estate (with his French publisher Jérôme Lindon), warning him how much work this would entail - but not, perhaps, of how many battles would be fought. Edward was honoured.

IN 1994 CAME "the first high-profile contretemps", when British director Deborah Warner staged a radically different version of Footfalls with Fiona Shaw in
London.

"The production destroyed the play's timing, atmosphere, the ghostly aspect," Beckett said at the time. At the estate's instigation, the production was cancelled after one week and a European tour called off. Warner, it was said, had been banned for life from directing the work of Beckett.
The ban story isn't true, says Edward, but nonetheless the reputation of the estate was born, and theatre-makers have operated within or struggled against its authoritarian and legal might ever since.

"You've got to make a stand," Beckett insisted to the critic Mel Gussow. "You can't abandon Sam to the wolves."

Edward understood his debt of protection in characteristically musical terms. "There are more than 15 recordings of Beethoven's late string quartets in the catalogue," he wrote, "every interpretation different, one from the next, but they are all based on the same notes, tonalities, dynamic and tempo markings. We feel justified in asking the same measure of respect for Samuel Beckett's plays."

And in the years spent chasing down all-female versions of Endgame or fending off productions of Waiting for Godot where the title character shows up, Beckett understands the desire of theatre-makers to wriggle free from the mounds of earth, to throw off the dustbins and shatter the urns of the Beckettian universe.

"I can understand a certain amount of frustration that directors have approaching Beckett's plays by having their hands tied to a certain extent," Edward says wearily, "but then I think it's the measure of the director in knowing how to deal with that." In his eyes, those who stray from the text, or - as another controversy in 2003 proved, when Australian director Neil Armfield added "illegal" music to Godot - those who add things to it, are really announcing their own defeat. He smacks his head in exasperation.

"They can't work it out," he says. "They can't stop themselves from rejigging it. If you've got to actually change something that you think is not working, than better not to do it at all."

IN RECENT YEARS, however, the estate has softened its policies, particularly in relation to the cardinal sin of transposing Beckett from one medium to another.
With the success of 2001's Beckett on Film series, in which 19 directors were urged to film Beckett's plays (rather than to adapt them), there were happy dividends for those brave - or wily - enough to take liberties with the text. Anthony Minghella's remarkable translation of Play, for instance, made the title more the imperative of the DVD player than an uncomfortable visitor from the stage.

"At the time I was rather upset about it," Edward admits, "I thought it had got away from the project. But a film-maker like Minghella wasn't going to just
stick a camera in front of three urns."

Beckett feels that each passing year brings more relevance to his uncle's oeuvre, that neither age nor circumstance can diminish it. And yet he still hears the distant howl of those wolves.

"In 50-odd years time, the field is open," he says of the eventual lapse of Beckett's copyright. "It will be very interesting. I'd love to be around and see how the work survives. And if it does survive."

Since Lindon's death in 2001, Edward Beckett has handled the executor's duties alone, his mounting responsibilities for the estate choking his musical career. But he does not resent the task. "In the end," he says, "the decisions you make are in memory and respect of him. He was the most important person in my life. And I soldier on with that thought in mind."