- OTHER MEDIA
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- A "Last Tape" to Remember
- SF Examiner (Jean Schiffman)
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- From the moment the lights come up on director Rob Melrose’s minimalist
set of “Krapp’s Last Tape” — a gray desk in a pool
of light surrounded by pitch black, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, an unwieldy
pile of black storage boxes — and actor Paul Gerrior as the eponymous
Krapp squints at his pocket watch, you know you’re in good hands.
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- Then, when he discovers a banana in a drawer of his desk, fondles it,
peels it and tosses the peel on the floor, eats it with sensual relish
and inevitability slips on that peel, it’s certain that the dignified,
shambling Gerrior, and Melrose (who also designed the effectively stark
lighting), know exactly what they’re doing with this short (less than
one hour) play.
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- Every carefully observed detail counts.
- This is a crystalline production of Samuel Beckett’s 1958 comedic
drama in which nothing much seems to happen: an aging man listens intently
to a tape he made 30 years ago, at age 39. It’s perhaps one of many
tapes he’s made and stored in those piles of boxes over the years.
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- On that tape, his younger self speaks both joyfully and despairingly
about his life, especially about an idyllic boat ride he took one day with
his beautiful and elusive lover.
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- Listening with great concentration, Krapp takes occasional breaks to
rewind, to fast forward, to wander offstage and sip booze, and at one point
to record a new, half-formed message.
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- So, yes, nothing much happens, and yet Krapp’s feelings of wonder
and frustration at his earlier self, regret, existential despair, loneliness
and wistful longing for past youth and love are visceral.
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- To watch Gerrior’s quietly mesmerizing performance is a revelation.
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- Every reaction to his own younger voice (beautifully read by actor
David Sinaiko with varying degrees of lyricism and bluster) feels organic
and true: facial expressions, chuckles and roars of laughter, the tensing
of his body, leaning forward in his chair, relaxing back, a cough, a sigh,
a startled movement, the dreamy, unfocused drifting of his eyes, the sudden
alertness as he hears something that he remembers quite clearly, the confusion
over forgotten incidents and the final poignant moments when he tenderly
embraces the machine itself.
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- Beckett’s text, Melrose’s direction and Gerrior’s nuanced
performance work together to somehow reflect our own deepest fears and
yearning.
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