Krapp’s Last Tape review: Stephen Rea is sublime
Krapp’s Last Tape | Barbican | ★★★★☆
Should you have been waiting in earnest for Krapp to show up – not unlike a character in a different Samuel Beckett play – this is your week. At the York Royal Theatre, Gary Oldman takes on the role of the ageing Krapp, reminiscing over audio diaries he recorded as a younger man, while at the Barbican the role is thoroughly, brilliantly inhabited by Stephen Rea.
Hunched over a desk in a darkened room, Rea’s Krapp is a husk of a man, ravaged by drink and loneliness and the passage of time. He searches through his mountain of tape recordings – “spools” he says aloud, as if hearing the word for the first time – which he plays on an old reel to reel cassette player for the audience to hear, searching for flickers of happiness long extinguished. Past love affairs. Lost ambitions.
Adding a poignant twist to events, Rea recorded Krapp’s tapes as a younger actor, hoping to one day play this role. It shows through in the tone and power and timbre of his voice, which resonates like a thesp in the prime of his life.
It’s a wonderfully small play to inhabit the wonderfully large space of the Barbican theatre and the sparse set design leans into this, the little desk spotlit on a little plinth, with a little walkway leading to the unseen back room, where Krapp drinks and stores the detritus of his life. The staging is slow and deliberate, stretching the slight material into a still-slight 55 minutes. Rea spends five minutes of that just eating a banana.
Indeed, there’s a clownish humour to the whole affair: a desk drawer that opens much further than it should; a banana skin waiting to be slipped upon. Much of the play is just watching Krapp listen to his tapes, his every twitch and blink taking on great significance. Not much happens and I could have watched it not happening all day.
Experiencing this play as a man the same age as the disembodied recording, Krapp’s Last Tape is a strange experience. The younger Krapp, at 39, believes his wave has already crested, that his best moments are behind him, unable to see the years of potential that remain. The older Krapp still thinks all this, only he’s right. It’s both affirming and rather miserable.
Krapp’s Last Tape is top-tier Beckett, a wonderful piece of work that showcases the playwright’s playful fascination with language and his unparalleled ability to skewer the human soul.
• Krapp’s Last Tape played at the Barbican