11 November 2008

LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 13: Rick Cluchey Performance

I rather enjoyed Rick Cluchey's performance of Krapp's Last Tape. On the whole it was roughly as I'd expected, but there's a difference between seeing the performance and visualizing it in my head. (Especially since I'm more a novels and stories person than a plays and screenplays person.)

I did note a couple of things watching the performance that I hadn't seen reading the play.


First, I noticed how much of the "comic relief" of the play was compressed into the pre-speech actions. This isn't to say that there is no comedy later in the play, but the majority of it is crammed into the first few actions as Krapp eats his bananas.

Second… In class discussion, there was some question about whether the "last tape" referred to the tape to which Krapp listens or the tape Krapp begins later in the play before abandoning it to return to his memories of Bianca. Watching Cluchey perform, and later checking against the text, we find that the tape Krapp listens to is box three, spool 5. While searching for it, Krapp references boxes after three, making it pretty clear that he has continued to make tapes since the tape he listens to. So the "last tape" must be the tape Krapp makes.

Cluchey said in his talk-back section that, according to Beckett, not only was the tape Krapp's last, but so was the "night in the future" when he made the tape.

Interesting. Nonetheless, Beckett's title focused on the tape, not the night. This suggests that the content of the last tape was important, and leads me back toward my original reading of the play in my earlier workbook entry. Krapp is looking back on choices and regretting them, choosing to go back to them as best he can, even though it is far too late to return and take the alternate path.

Which basically ties into my notes on Herb Blau's lecture and the conclusion that, far enough down the road to regret the choice is probably too late to reverse it. Make your choices. Move forward. Live with them.


Maybe that's Beckettian in a way.

And I still think the play might also be Beckett looking forward to looking back and regretting a choice he was facing, as said in the previous entry. In fact, watching the play and realizing that Cluchey is acting much as Beckett directed him, it seems all the more certain to me.

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