KRAPP’S LAST TAPE
Cast a cold eye on life, on death. –W.B. Yeats
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The frustrating truth may be that Beckett is impossible to produce. I’ve certainly never seen a production of a Beckett play that came across with more than a fraction of what I understood from reading the script, and Element Theatre Company’s current double bill of Beckett one-acts is no exception. At least it’s a grown-up production, free of the usual undergraduate stupidities. But something more than mature insight is called for here, I think–something bordering on disrespect. I mean, look at the stage directions in any one of Beckett’s plays. They’re ridiculously complicated and dictatorial. They ask directors to do double back flips into an empty pool, with Beckett holding all the scorecards. Maybe, just maybe, the thing to do is to take some liberties with Beckett.
Ortlieb takes much greater liberties with Krapp’s Last Tape, and with greater success. The play is stripped of 90 percent of its stage directions and all of the dialogue. So the audience doesn’t review, along with Krapp, excerpts from his extensive tape-recorded diary. We also miss Krapp’s commentary–his cynical and evasive rationalizations of what appears to be a wasted life. Essentially all you see in this production is a pantomime of Krapp listening to blank tape or holding the microphone but unable to say anything. He gradually becomes more and more distressed, and finally the tape runs off the spool, leaving him paralyzed and vaguely aghast.
