Anthony Cronin (Photo by Peyton Whiteside)
Reviewed by Lovell Estell III
Santa Monica Playhouse
Through March 8
RECOMMENDED
Samuel Beckett penned this one-act in 1958 for Irish actor Patrick Magee after hearing him read excerpts from two other short plays. Krapp’s Last Tape is one of Beckett’s under-produced gems (and arguably, underappreciated), but it appeared in Los Angeles years ago in two celebrated productions, one starring the late Brian Dennehy at the Geffen, and the other at the Kirk Douglas theater with John Hurt. It’s a simple piece, but Beckett’s piercing sense of irony and dark humor are much in evidence.
As the lights come on, we see the ghostly-pale Krapp (Tony Cronin, who also directs), seated behind a black desk cluttered by stacks of numbered boxes, with a small reel-to reel tape player in front of him. His reddened eyes, gray hair and beard, and strained mannerisms (he trembles and drinks continually), unmistakably suggest disintegration, and this impression is amplified when he slowly rises from his seat and, bent-over, shuffles to the front of the desk, opens a drawer and finds a banana which he hastily devours it.
Krapp is a writer and — for the last thirty years on his birthday — he’s listened to audiotapes he made decades earlier, all of which are stored in the boxes on his desk. Life has pretty much reached its terminus for him, and these taped recollections are all he has. They bring him no joy, and much regret and pain. “Box 3 spool five,” he drearily says, after which he laboriously places the tape on the player.
On it are memories of a love affair which ended painfully for him, musings about his mother, “now at rest,” promises he made to himself but never kept, and memories that he now struggles vainly to recall, and which at times elicit tears. At one point, he has to consult a dictionary to look up a word whose definition he has forgotten.
It’s a haunting portrait of sadness, loss and oppressive melancholy that Cronin embodies in a nuanced performance. It’s appropriately punctuated at the end when Krapp mournfully says, “Perhaps my best years are gone, when there was still a chance of happiness.”
Frank Raducz provides an effective sound design.
Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4th St., Santa Monica. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru March 8. www.theatreforasmallspace.org Running time 55 minutes.
