Theatre review: Stephen Rea peels back the years in Krapp’s Last Tape
Stephen Rea in Samuel Beckett's Krapp’s Last Tape at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. Picture: Patricio Cassinoni
- Krapp’s Last Tape
- Project Arts Centre
- ★★★★☆
It’s hard to believe that Landmark Productions is itself marking the landmark of 20 years with this revival of Krapp’s Last Tape. Twenty years of combining canny programming, artistic rigour, and popular appeal, often achieving the latter with a sprinkling of star power, be that Cillian Murphy, Gabriel Byrne, Colm Meaney, Siobhán McSweeney, or Domhnall Gleeson.
The latest to bring the name-recognition factor is Stephen Rea, who takes up a titular role in Samuel Beckett’s most approachable play, one that’s already been burnished on the Dublin stage by indelible depictions from two departed giants, John Hurt and Michael Gambon.
But, as ever, it’s apt timing from Landmark. Enough years have passed for Rea to make this his own. And we recall, too, it was first imagined for a Northern Irish actor, Patrick Magee, with Beckett dubbing an early draft “Magee’s monologue”. Here we are then: Rea’s recitation, with the only palpable ghosts being those of Krapp’s own past, or that of Beckett himself, this being his most autobiographical play.
Nonetheless, it’s such a familiar role, you can almost feel yourself ticking the boxes. How does Rea do with the opening banana-eating sketch? Very well it turns out: puckering his mouth in babyish wonder in an early reminder that our past selves linger within.
Does he luxuriate appropriately in the word “spool”? Why, yes he does. But he doesn’t overdo it. Are the two voices, one recorded 30 years ago, one here and now, sufficiently distinct, but close enough to convincingly be one person?
Well, that’s an interesting point. Rea actually made these recordings 12 years ago, with a radio producer and a sound engineer. A unique selling point for any production, then, but one that turns out to be fool’s gold. The recorded Rea certainly imbues the 39-year-old Krapp with a self-glorifying pomposity, but the recordings are a mite too polished and professional-sounding. A bit of crackle would have helped.
Confronted with this, Rea and director Vicky Featherstone could possibly have done more to accentuate distance and difference from the other side, with the voice of 69-year-old Krapp. But Rea largely sticks to the neutral accent of the recordings, his voice only occasionally rasping, or adding that familiar twang of his, or pronouncing it, in an effective moment, “Once wasn’t enough for ya,” instead of “you”.
It all adds up to a subtle, modulated performance, a morose and resigned old Krapp, rather than a harsh one, even as he castigates the “stupid bastard I took myself for 30 years ago.”
For stark contrasts, one must look elsewhere in this production, to the combined effect of Jamie Vartan’s set and Paul Keogan’s lighting. A door in the darkness allows Krapp to come and go, along an angled shaft of light, runway like. On a schoolroom chair at a simple table is where he sits, lit from above, the lamplight shifting with his expression as he finally descends into silent reverie, wondering about the paths not taken in art and life.
It’s beautiful to behold, a jewel of a production, even if its emotions are somewhat muted.
- Until February 3
