KRAPP'S LAST TAPE
by SAMUEL BECKETT
Burton Taylor until Saturday 9th March 2002
Krapps
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 Whos
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and in Broken Glass. The
play is a one-man show, the only other character being Krapps
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. 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? Krapps act of throwing down a banana skin then slipping on it near the beginning is perhaps a very cynical comment by Beckett on a humans unrelenting fulfillment of cliches. An excellent play well performed, well-worth seeing. Alison Ireland 05.03.02
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