Krapp’s Last Tape: Superb Stephen Rea in a brutally funny play
A man listens to recordings of his younger self, in Samuel Beckett's absurdist classic.
Project Arts Centre - Space Upstairs, Dublin
★★★★☆
“Once wasn’t enough for you,” says an elderly man loathingly to himself, inside a dimly lit room. Listening to audio tapes he recorded 30 years ago, to a verbose younger version speaking certainly about life’s revelations, about sad brushes with grief, and enthralling sex with women, he hunches over the tape recorder drunk and depressed; Krapp is having quite the birthday.
Samuel Beckett’s absurdist classic from 1958, as the title suggests, is as grimly final as it is funnily juvenile. The lead character’s name is, seriously, a satirically misspelled synonym for shit. The cylinders of tape used in reel-to-reel audio are pointed out to have a funny name – “Spoool!” says Stephen Rea’s Krapp, with the “pew” sound of a lazer gun.