Malignant Memories
The Oregonian, July 25, 2003
by Nathan Skidmore
Avant-garde theater shifted gears in 1958, when the first performance of “Krapp’s Last Tape” showed thespians that Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” was just one of his shades of gray. His most famous play waded through existentialist territory, but the more recent “Krapp’s Last Tape” signaled a change in Beckett’s writing—a move toward an autobiographical style.
As the main character, Krapp reveals his own past in tragically comic form. At one moment he is the dazed introspective struggling with his dreams and fears, the next he is caught up in a semi-dialogue with personal reel-to-reel recordings, reliving his most painful moments. Like “Godot,” themes of repetition and the bleakness that Beckett drew from life are omnipresent. Krapp realizes that although time has taken his life, he is still the brain he hears on tape, desperate and confused as ever.
Portland’s Liminal Performance Group, which formed in 1997, leans toward plays that incorporate media into live performances. Since Krapp spends the bulk of the play interacting with a reel-to-reel, the play drew Liminal’s attention with its modern approach to storytelling. Liminal adds layers to this deceptively simple piece by using various types of media to complement the acting onstage, following the sometimes sad, always thoughtful life of an old man.
Continues 10:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Aug. 9. Liminal Space, 403 N.W. Fifth Ave.; $6-$15 (pay what you will), 503-890-2993.
Krapp’s Last Tape (2003)
First performed in 1958, Krapp’s Last Tape signaled a new era for avant-garde performance and changed the face of modern theatre with its repetitive literary structure, vaudevillian imagery and stark postmodern perspective. Following on the heels of Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape marked a move in Beckett’s work toward the autobiographical. The play combines painfully hilarious comedy with delightfully gut-wrenching tragedy to reveal past and present moments from one man’s life. As a character, Krapp becomes the ultra-retro-modern Everyman who sometimes plays the clown slipping on a banana peel, and at other times plays the tragic hero battling his inmost dreams and fears.
Liminal’s interest in incorporating live sound and media into our performances made us particularly interested in Krapp’s Last Tape. It is one of the first 20th century theatrical works to incorporate recorded media as an essential part of its structure. Beckett masterfully unfolds his story through a dialogue between live actor and machine, where a single character depends on a reel-to-reel tape recorder to re-live his past. Together, Krapp and the audience experience his life for the first time through Beckett’s elaborate layering of live and recorded dialogue.
Krapp’s Last Tape was performed in July 2003 by Liminal sound and media designer John Berendzen with direction from Liminal movement director Amanda Boekelheide.
An installation at Liminal Space by painter David Hayes featured portraits of Samuel Beckett, as well as paintings inspired by his writings.
