F. Murray Abraham plays Krapp in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, part of Beckett Briefs, a program of short plays by the Irish Nobel Prize–winner.
Beckett Briefs, the rubric for three short plays by Samuel Beckett at the Irish Repertory Theatre, provides a rare look at works by the dramatist whose Waiting for Godot has overshadowed all theater since the mid-20th-century. The progression of plays devised by director Ciarán O’Reilly moves from the slightest, Not I, featuring only a mouth speaking, to Play, in which only three heads appear, to the longest, and most fruitfully theatrical, Krapp’s Last Tape, featuring Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham, head to toe. All three works are suffused with regrets about or outrage at the setbacks, blunders, jealousy, and dishonesty in the characters’ lives.
Not I, in which only a mouth appears, opens the evening of one-acts, including Play, in which three heads pop out of urns. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Not I is the least effective of the three. It has no real character, just, in the words of late Beckett doyenne Billie Whitelaw, “a raging, babbling mouth.” The orifice (Sarah Street), highlighted by bright red lipstick and a spotlight, delivers a speedy jumble of choppy two- and three-word phrases, with only occasional variation in pitch and speed, culminating in the loud: “What? Who? No. SHE!” Spoken mostly at a gallop, the “babbling” is too often merely that.
For some reason, O’Reilly has chosen to ignore Beckett’s second character, a silent Auditor, “sex undeterminable, enveloped from head to foot in loose black djellaba, with hood.” Reading the text on the page, one may surmise that this figure is Death, listening to the last gasp of the mouth. Without that figure to anchor the situation, some tension has been lost.
Play has three characters, although they are not yet fully visible humans. Against a backdrop of lowering clouds, three heads popping out of large gray urns—a man, his wife, and his mistress—deliver their overlapping versions of a love triangle gone wrong. They speak by turns, but occasionally in unison. The insult comedy makes it unexpectedly funny.
W2 [the mistress]: One morning as I was sitting stitching at the open window she burst in and flew at me. Give him up, she screamed. He’s mine. Her photographs were kind to her. Seeing her now for the first time full length in the flesh I understood why he preferred me.
W1 [the wife]: When I was satisfied it was all over, I went to have a gloat. Just a common tart. What he could have found in her when he had me—
Michael Gottlieb deftly handles the jumps of spotlighting that Beckett demands, and the voices in their different registers blend well. Street (as W2) is higher and squeakier (and clearer) than in Not I; Kate Forbes, more measured in a lower register, finds the most music in the language. Roger Dominic Casey’s Man is resonant, although his line “God, what vermin women” twice misses the laugh it deserves.
Finding a banana, Krapp (Abraham) gives it the once-over.
The final play, Krapp’s Last Tape, offers the masterly F. Murray Abraham, who manages to invest emotion in the twitching of his fingers (to be fair, that’s an opportunity that the others lack). As Krapp, the disheveled protagonist, he shuffles around a study—desk, chair, boxes of magnetic tapes, and a bookcase—looking for a reel-to-reel tape he made decades earlier. On it he hears: “Just been listening to an old year, passages at random. … Hard to believe I was ever that young whelp.” The structure is like a funhouse mirror as Krapp plays the tape, listening to old recollections of yet older memories.
Abraham also performs delightful comic business. He fumbles with keys, wrestles with stuck drawers. When he finds a banana, he strokes it erotically—an echo of Gogo’s affinity for carrots in Waiting for Godot. Even nearing the end, Krapp’s mind is curious, not just because he wants to listen to his younger self. He hears the word viduity on the tape, and he pulls out a dictionary to learn its meaning.
Krapp is searching for the memory of an erotic encounter, but he groans and swears as he keeps hitting darkness: “What I suddenly saw then was this, that the belief I had been going on all my life, namely’’—then he suddenly shuts off the tape and groans. Starting again, he is thwarted again. Finally, he locates the memory on the tape: a recollection of a romantic breakup that he regrets. A flurry of happy memories bubbles up: “Be again in the dingle on a Christmas Eve, gathering holly, the red-berried. … Be again at Croghan, on a Sunday morning, with the haze and the bitch, stop and listen to the bells.” But ultimately, for Krapp, and Beckett, too, they aren’t enough to outweigh “all that old misery.”
Beckett Briefs runs through March 9 at the Irish Repertory Theater (132 W. 22nd St.) Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, call (212) 727-2737 or visit irishrep.org.
Playwright: Samuel Beckett
Director: Ciarán O’Reilly
Scenic Design: Charlie Corcoran
Costume Design: Orla Long
Lighting Design: Michael Gottlieb
Sound Design: M. Florian Staab & Ryan Rumery
Original Music: Ryan Rumery
