Krapp´s Last Tape

It is always to Beckett´s credit that while his plays lament a slight nausea to existence, they are told with enough sardonic amusement as not to depress.

AC Production´s ‘Krapp´s Last Tape´ is a fine example of how this can be well-portrayed. A feeble, nearly blind and deaf, solitary and half-drunk man, crouching in a squalid room, subsisting on bananas and playing to himself (commenting all the while) old tape recordings of his own voice – recordings, moreover, that consist in no small part on comments on still earlier tapes.  We listen to Krapp´s bitter recourse on what a fool he was to live life, surviving the death of parents, the loss of love, the defeat of noble aspirations and resolutions, the eternally losing battle against the allure of drink and the unruliness of the bowels.

While we listen to Krapp muse against the rumor of his existence being snuffed out, we still escape feeling that it is a depressing play. Krapp shows himself to be a character well disposed to poetry, with many crystalline images issuing to us from the tapes of him as a younger man. In Krapp´s pathetically lonely attempts to re-evaluate, capture and savor his life, we see him trying to make what Beckett made of it – art. Time splits continuously between the young and old Krapp, allowing us glimpses into the infinity of this old man´s yearning and remorse.

AC Production´s account of this ushers us seamlessly into Krapp´s long sleepless night with a failsafe rendition, which could have benefited from a more daring elaboration of Beckett´s stage directions.