The Old Tune is a one-act radio play adapted by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett from the 1960 French radio drama La Manivelle (The Crank) by Robert Pinget. It is described as a "free translation" in which Beckett transformed Pinget's Parisian characters, Toupin and Pommard, into Dubliners named Cream and Gorman.
Background
In 1957, Robert Pinget, a close friend of Beckett at the time, translated Beckett's radio play All That Fall into French. In 1960, Pinget's play Lettre Morte was presented on a double bill with Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape in Paris. Beckett subsequently offered to translate Pinget's La Manivelle into English, and Pinget accepted, granting Beckett permission to relocate the setting to Dublin and transform the characters into Irishmen. Beckett described the work as a model translation.
First Broadcast
The play was first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 23 August 1960, directed by Barbara Bray, with Jack MacGowran as Cream and Patrick Magee as Gorman. For the unspecified old tune played by Gorman on the barrel organ, Beckett selected The Bluebells of Scotland.
Synopsis
The play opens with street noises and an elderly organ grinder, Gorman, struggling with his dilapidated barrel organ. He encounters an old friend, Cream, a widower in his seventies who has been living with his daughter Bertha. The two men engage in a rambling conversation marked by faulty memories, disagreements over details, and the constant interruption of passing motor vehicles. They reminisce about the past—the first cars they saw, a hot summer in 1895, their military service, family members, and acquaintances—but repeatedly fail to agree on names, dates, and places. Their dialogue reveals two isolated old men struggling with memory loss and the erosion of their shared past, while the modern world passes them by. The play ends with Gorman restarting his barrel organ, which rises triumphantly over the street noise.
Interpretation
Critics note that Beckett drew heavily on the stylized language of John Millington Synge and the verbal excesses of Seán O'Casey to transform Pinget's original into a pastiche of the Irish comic tradition of linguistic stereotyping. The play explores themes of aging, memory loss, isolation, and the disintegration of certainty. Despite its Irish-specific setting, the themes are considered universal. Beckett himself insisted that Pinget receive full credit for the work, stating in 1986: "Be sure Pinget gets full & visible credit. The Old Tune his vision not mine."
Stage Productions
The play was adapted for the stage shortly after its publication in Evergreen Review (March–April 1961) and was first presented off-Broadway at the Royal Playhouse, New York City, on 23 March 1961. Subsequent productions included the Judson Poets' Theater in New York (1964), the Mercury Theatre in London (1964), and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (1965).
