‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, a one-act play written in English in 1958, shows Samuel Beckett making use of the tape-recorder to demonstrate the elusive nature of human character. A commanding performance was given by Peter Harness in the lead, and indeed only role, who has also in recent years given similarly strong performances in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ and in ‘Broken Glass’. The play is a one-man show, the only other character being Krapp’s former 39 year-old self, a voice coming from the tape recorder on which, over the years, Krapp has recorded his life as he perceives it.

The play opens dramatically with Krapp, almost ape-like, seated next to his desk, masticating in what would be silence but for the curse of mobile phone sounds from the audience. He is in the corner of the small room, which is the theatre, with the audience forming the other two sides of the square, hemming him in where he sits. This one scene gives a short but immensely telling glimpse into the present and former life of Krapp and also a poignant demonstration of the mutability of mankind. Krapp, who has made a habit of making tapes detailing the events of each year of his life, is 69 and decides (perhaps for the roundness of the number or perhaps for the sake of a particular memory) to hear the tape he made thirty years ago on his 39th birthday. This was a crucial year in his life, the year in which he discarded love and happiness in the form of a girl, and took up with his ‘magnum opus’ instead, which proved unfaithful in the end.

But the man who speaks back to him from the spool, although clearly well-known to Krapp in terms of what he speaks of, is also a stranger - Krapp cannot relate to him, even having to look up one of the words his former self has used. When later making the tape for his 69th year he curses his former self as he cannot understand him. The question produced by Beckett on a larger, human scale is that if thirty years makes us strangers to ourselves, does one year too? Does one hour? Are we strangers from minute to minute? Because Krapp has recorded his life in such a way, he is not able to use the usual human trick of re-writing his own history and thus justify his past; he cannot place a satisfying pattern on events.

The despair and resignation of Krapp is brought home brilliantly by Peter Harness, one of the best actors I have seen on the Oxford circuit, as he desultorily consumes bananas and drinks, things he has thirty years before resolved no longer to do. Would he want back those past years or not? Would anyone? Krapp’s act of throwing down a banana skin then slipping on it near the beginning is perhaps a very cynical comment by Beckett on a human’s unrelenting fulfillment of cliches. An excellent play well performed, well-worth seeing.

Alison Ireland 05.03.02