KRAPP'S LAST TAPE. To 6 May.
London
KRAPP’S LAST TAPE
by Samuel Beckett
Barbican Theatre (The Pit) To 6 May 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 4pm & 4 May 2.30pm
Runs 1hr 5min No interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7554
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
review: Timothy Ramsden 26 April
Desolation made vivid in a supreme performance.
John Hurt is outstanding as Samuel Beckett’s 69-year old writer listening to his audio-diary of 30 years earlier, when he was, Brodie-like, in his prime. Craggy-featured as the older Beckett himself, Hurt makes every flinch and flicker count. More, the face transposes between moods with no visible sign of movement. This is thrilling, top-notch acting.
Compared with Beckett’s later short plays the piece seems a bundle of fun. There are music hall tricks with a banana – Hurt adds to the banana-skin routine the sensual joy of holding a complete banana in his mouth like a humpbacked cigar. He’s a character who’s not only all visible but moves freely around, having fun in his squeaky shoes, showing clown-like surprise when he meets the edge of darkness, rocking happily in-and-out of the light.
Certainly the fruit revives him. For the start, in Robin Lefevre’s fine-judged production, is as desolate as anything in Beckett. Hurt’s Krapp sits straight-backed at his bare table, lit from behind. Gradually light reveals his face, agonised in apparent immobility. Imperceptibly the expression changes, becoming a long look of deep loss before a twitch recalls him to the present.
Krapp’s tapes, in their ancient canisters, reveal a lively past; he laughs luridly at the thought of giving up drink, or reducing sexual activity (a brief, dismissive laugh at that thought). His eye’s as likely to show a wicked glint as, in the end, glistening tears.
Hurt and Lefevre give Krapp a vivid individuality, his present self puzzled or contemptuous of himself when younger. Yet, as the tape voyages into the central recollection of midnight love-making, a recorded moment Krapp repeats, it’s clear what he’s lost. Drawing his arms round the machine till he’s cuddling it, his head sinks in hopeless, regretful embrace of the past forever gone.
The ending is sad recognition. Krapp’s happy moment was a Romeo and Juliet affair – significant only because it has died. Finally, as the 39-year old Krapp’s voice says he wouldn’t have his youth back, Hurt is again upright, loss and agony personified in the fading light. Could this play be better done?
Krapp: John Hurt
Director: Robin Lefevre
Designer: Giles Cadle
Lighting: James McConnell
2006-04-27 11:40:38