KRAPP’S LAST TAPE

Cockpit Theatre

★★★½

“a fascinatingly original and deeply resonant take on Beckett’s classic monologue”

Krapp’s Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett, follows an aging, solitary man who spends his 69th birthday evening – as he has spent so many before it – listening to tape recordings he made decades earlier and revisiting the reflections of his younger self.

Krapp’s annual ritual is to record a tape reflecting on who he once was and speculating about what might lie ahead. Now, however, he has nothing good to say about the man he has become: a figure living on bananas and drink, once physically excessive in all things, now reduced to a life where only his sexual appetite has dwindled into near nothingness.

This short run production at the Cockpit Theatre has drawn national attention because its solo performer was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Peter Marinker, 85, is best known for his distinctive voice work, primarily from BBC radio drama. Using reel to reel tapes Marinker recorded when he last played Krapp in 1983, Dave Wybrow’s sensitive production and direction shapes these archival materials into a fascinatingly original and deeply resonant take on Beckett’s classic monologue.

Live in ear prompts from the visible stage manager, Marta Fossati, subtly guide Marinker through the performance, accompanied by screen captions that both quite deliberately highlight the production’s preoccupation with memory and the act of remembering. At times, this does pull focus and places the actor more prominently in view than the character, yet Marinker still offers us a compelling performance that lingers long after. The physical decline is etched into his body and demeanour. “Perhaps my best years are gone… but I wouldn’t want them back,” the character says. Krapp’s final stillness reveals the line for what it is: a self protective fiction. He did want those years back: like all of us, he is more governed by self deception than he would ever admit.

Beckett’s contrast of light and dark is handled with a softer touch here than in many productions of this classic short play. Even so, the browns, blacks and greys of Duncan Henderson’s production design and fabrication create a muted, almost monochrome world, underscoring how little colour remains in Krapp’s life.

Chris Lincé’s lighting reinforces this muted palette. It’s not as dim as in other productions I’ve seen, which slightly misses the opportunity to underline the extent of Krapp’s decline, and yet Beckett’s equation of late evening with late life still comes through.

Peter Marinker has a long history with Beckett, and he draws out both the humour and the sadness in the role. Yet one wonders whether an audience so aware of the production’s circumstances felt fully able to relax into the comedy. In particular, the classic Beckett clowning of Krapp’s banana business, which Marinker handles with ripe comic timing.

Perhaps inevitably, the production feels more like a meditation on a man recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s performing a play about the fragility of memory than a fuller exploration of Beckett’s other themes, such as regret and isolation. Even so, it remains a rich and resonant interpretation of Krapp’s Last Tape, and one that fully earned the standing ovation it received at the second curtain call.

Krapp’s spool of life is almost fully wound, yet whether “last” means final or merely “most recent” remains a question many productions of this one act monologue continue to grapple with. What is certain is that, despite his age and condition, Peter Marinker still has plenty left to give – and he will for some time yet.

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE

Cockpit Theatre

Reviewed on 2nd September

by Robert West

Photography by Chris Lincé for Stagefright Film

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE