From 2002:

KRAPP'S LAST TAPE, MADCAP Centre of Performing Arts - Thursday 28th November

I'm not a major exponent of theatre. Not enough CGI monsters and explosions for my liking. Personally my idea of a cool night's theatre would be two hours of Bruce Willis crawling through air ducts shooting Alan Rickman.

So it comes as a great surprise to me and most of my friends (who tend to look at me slightly nervously whenever I walk out of a theatre, possibly because I've been known to assault small children I've overheard expounding its virtues) that I loved Krapp's Last Tape. I adored it. I was rapt, I was on the edge of my seat, hell, I think if it was darker I'd have probably started wanking there and then. It rocked, in fact for the whole fifty minutes or so (a perfect length for theatre in my opinion) I didn't once want Krapp to whip out an Uzi and blow a banana away screaming "Yippie ki-aye motherfucker!!!!".

That’s a big deal for me.

Okay, so basically Krapp's Last Tape concerns an old man (Krapp) going back over the autobiographical tapes he's made throughout his life. We get the impression that he's not long for this Earth and this "last tape" will sort of act as a coda to his life, a final listening to what he was, through the ears of what he is now.

There's also a strange time shift here, this final tape is also in a sense the end of his life in the recorded medium : hence Krapp as we see him on stage is, in a sense, already dead. Metaphysically, one may suggest that Krapp as we see him on stage exists as nothing more than an extension of the tape machine, and that the real Krapp is somewhere in those brown magnetic loops, whispering to his dead self from the past…

…It's both ironic and strangely uplifting that what the tapes say effects Krapp on two emotional levels. The first - sadness and pain at times past and hard memories to re-endure ; the second in the form of his dismissal of the irrelevant, his realisation that this young man isn't him, his experiences are seen through the eyes of one who doesn't know what comes next. For me at least, Krapp's final resolution is not one of finality and depression but instead one of continuation. Krapp breaks from his ties to this young man he really doesn't know, who bickers incessantly at him with all the arrogance of youth, and instead looks to the future. He has his prostitute, he has his bananas, and fuck this irrelevant little tit who's trying to make him feel things he no longer fully understands, he's off to make another tape.

In fact sod it, what I'm saying is that this is "Krapp 1 : Krapp Hard", and it made me eager for "Krapp 2: Krapp Hard With A Vengence" - (oh, very good - MMT).

I guess I should say more about the play itself, or at least more about the structure, the story in those tapes, the words themselves, but to be frank I don't think it matters. It's an interesting enough play - the writings fair, the structures complex… But it's not really a play. It’s a character piece. It’s a Characterization piece. It all hangs on Krapp : his presence, his ability to make us interested in this one old man in his study. Frankly he mumbles half the time anyway, for all I care he could have been reciting the Lords Prayer backwards. Maybe he was, it doesn't matter.

If this play is relevant today, then it’s the theatrical equivalent of a fly on the wall documentary. This is fifty minutes in the life of some bloke you don't know, and it hinges on you wanting to know about him. That doesn't come through the words, it comes through Krapp. And Krapp was played by Tony… ...sort of. You see, Tony's fucked. Tony, if you're reading this dude, you're fucked, your career as an actor's fucked, because frankly, you're Krapp.

Let's just start by saying this guy has an amazing physical presence. You know how some people just jump out of the screen at you? I'm thinking Steve Buscemi's goggle eyes, Von Sydow's amazing profile, the way Bowie still makes my girlfriend cream even though he's sixty. You know the sort? That dude in The Two Towers who plays Grima Wormtongue this Christmas? (Brad Dourif - he was excellent in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest too - although he was the voice of Chucky as well. Hmmm. - MMT) Well, Tony's got that.

The guy looks like he's dying from some long term wasting disease, his eyes sunken so far back, the skin pulled back across those amazing cheekbones. Seriously, I know his partner, and I reckon she killed Tony several years ago, buried him in lime, and resurrected him solely for this part. Just standing there he reeks of death, you can see the way light sort of cowers away from his body, every ounce of that dusty old haggard study stage just sort of backs off - not wanting to get any of his death stink on them. Only the tape player, an extension of Krapp himself, seems to have any affinity with him, and even it seems nervous... Jittery - terrified of making a mistake.

Let's get this straight though. He doesn't present this aura because he's actually feeble. The guy's a physical genius. I swear, the intensity of his focus on stage, the depth to which he submerged himself in Krapp (?!?!), well I don't buy it. I don't buy an actor can simply perform that. There's only one explenation. Tony is Krapp. Krapp's Tony. And that’s why he's screwed, because I cannot believe he can ever be anything but Krapp from now on. Hell, you could give him a red wig and stick him in a Broadway production of "Annie" and I swear it would still be Krapp telling us the sun will come out tomorrow, ready to rip that little orphan face off and expose his grinning skull to us.

The best tribute I can imagine to this performance will be if he manages to pull off a different character as equally memorable - because at the moment, Krapp's alive and well and living in Wolverton. Seriously, his transformation into Krapp was scarily good.

You know how I said earlier that the tape player must have been scared of him? Well, let's talk about the technical aspects of this play.

It's one guy, on stage, reacting to and rewinding to bits of his life on a tape player. There's no space for error here. Can you imagine what would happen if he rewound too far, missed a bit, hell, if the tape broke?!?! Not a whisper, not an iota of doubt hung on that stage. Nothing could go wrong. I remember watching a production of Whose Life Is It Anyway, they had this bed on wheels on stage. And everytime somone got onto the stage the bed moved a little closer to the edge… By the end the audience was hanging on every millimeter that bed moved. Destroyed the play.

Like the bed, it would have been so easy to make the technical aspect of this play the star. They didn't. I was lulled into an almost precognitive recognition that absolutely nothing was going to go wrong, to the point where the practicalities of technology disappeared. The tape player was just another aspect of Krapp's life. That’s an amazing amount of confidence for one actor to generate.

Complaints? Few. This is the only actual production of Krapp I've witnessed. As far as I'm concerned that’s how Krapp should be done. One presence, on stage, feeding an audience a great big chewy character banana. It was sticky, sweet, sickly, unpleasant, energising, uncomfortable... ...Everything a great big chewy character banana should be.

I could, for example, suggest that he could have done more with the physical humour... elongated it with a couple of random pratfalls or fruit based sight gags, but frankly, why? The pacing was fine for me, I didn't come out saying "now if he'd produced a banana from his arse, THAT! would have made the show". It simply didn't need it. He could have paused more, or enunciated certain parts more clearly, but that would have been a different Krapp, and I was fascinated by the one I got. Next time I see it, maybe Krapp'll wear a bear costume and unicycle round his office and who knows - maybe I'll enjoy that. Certainly Krapp stalking Alan Rickman through air vents would be cool - but that’s not the show I saw.

I saw this old guy, on stage for fifty minutes doing what he does, a credit to the performance is that I think I could have gone down to the bar and got a beer, come back up a few hours later and probably watched Krapp wanking over the adult channels, topless volleyball, and banging a broom on the ceiling to shut up his randy neighbours.

I could go on. And on and on and on. But what's the point? I hope you saw this production. If you didn't, there's only one thing for it. Email Tony and get him to do it again. Or contact MADCAP and tell them you want to see him do it again.

Lastly, I'm sure there were other people involved in this production… but I don't know any of them - so well done if you added something (apart from Carolyn who I believe went through hell living with Krapp, and will probably want to bite my nads off for suggesting he does it again).

That’s me out. A big well done from M(onkey) K(ettle), we felt it rocked. (too true - MMT) Have fun.

Simon Edwards.