AT ABOUT 7 p.m. on October 23, a few hours after the announcement that the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature had been awarded to the Irish writer Samuel Barclay Beckett, the Irish Times received a call for help from the literary editor of a leading Norwegian paper. "Beckett," he said, "is in Tunisia.

AS WE go to press the 1969 Festival has not yet reached the half-way mark, and so any evaluation or even any prophecy would be at best purely speculative, a judgment with but half the evidence heard. Yet some productions have a definite interest in their own right and may providc a foundation on which to build a subsequent, more complete assessment. The Festival, it can bc argued, is more than the sum of its parts, but every part contributes to the Festival as a whole.