Writer: Samuel Beckett
Director: Robert Pennant Jones
If, standing between two mirrors, you saw your own image endlessly repeated, but gradually altered to reflect the passing of time, you would have the visual equivalent of Krapp’s Last Tape. In this short story of a play, a self-absorbed man, named like a comic-strip loser, makes annual recordings on his birthday, reviewing the year gone by. It’s ‘the future’, which explains why he’s had the technology for at least forty years, but Samuel Beckett wrote the play in 1958 so the future is now the past. All younger audiences may understand about the word ‘spool’ is that it rhymes pleasingly with ‘stool’ (which may be why Krapp enjoys saying it at such length).
Everything about this excellent production is as it should be. With Richard Davies stage-managing, the bananas (slightly overripe) are in the drawer; the siphon hisses off -stage; the dictionary, when it appears, is a filthy old tome – exactly the place for Krapp to find ‘viduity’ – a word he used at a more pompous age. Sheila Burbidge dresses Krapp precisely as directed, even exaggerating the horrible slovenliness, and including the ‘surprising pair of dirty white boots.’ The contrast of light and dark is an important theme in the play. Stephen Ley’s hanging light just covers the desk, the boxes and the tape machine in warmth-less orange. The rest of the stage is dark. Krapp listens to himself the year he acquired this light: it makes him ‘feel less alone’. Since much of the play is a recording, a great deal depends on the sound being right, and Laurence Tuerk achieves this to perfection.
According to the programme, director Robert Pennant Jones met Beckett in 1975. Whether or not it was truly a significant event for him, it’s a fitting inclusion for a play about ‘moments’ in a life. He does the play justice. John Chapman, shambling, round-shouldered and unkempt – looks like Krapp. He does nothing to undermine the phallic connotations of the banana he slowly consumes at the start of the play. He manages to engage the audience for a long time not only in silence but also with his absence, while seeming utterly oblivious of them – all his actions are for himself alone. With bushy eyebrows and an uneven complexion, he resembles a surprised scarecrow, but then there is a sweetly boyish smile, even an occasional look of tenderness. His voice is a delight to listen to. When Krapp asks himself ‘Did I ever sing?’ it seems unlikely that the answer is really no.
This is one of Beckett’s more accessible plays, and it leaves memorable images – the girl in the shabby green coat, the brown blind that marked the passing of Mother. In a way it is stuck in its time, because so much of it depends on a vintage tape recorder – but in another way it is timeless. Old age is here to stay.
The second half of the evening consists of a short video of Pennant Jones talking about Beckett at the Tower, and then another beautifully shot film of him performing as Molloy. Just as well we first see him well-scrubbed with a neatly trimmed snowy beard. Two unwashed and dishevelled old men would be too much for one evening.
Runs until 29 January 2022
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