THE BECKETT CIRCLE LE CERCLE DE BECKETT O N e w s l e t t e r o f t h e S a m u e l B e c k e t t S o c i e t y Krapp at The Gate Michael Colgan, director of Dublin’s Gate The- pearances on The Gate stage in recent years. The atre, regularly rises to the occasion of Beckett possibility that he might essay the role of Krapp Festivals every number of years (most recently would have been suggested by his appearance for the centenary of the playwright’s birth). His in Beckett’s Eh Joe, director Atom Egoyan’s rei- fidelity to the works and memory of the man magining of that TV film as a stage play. The role never wavers or diminishes, as evidenced by sin- consisted primarily of Joe—in the lugubrious gle productions of individual plays between the form of Gambon—padding around and explor- festivals. Not that those individual productions ing his room before settling on the bed. Egoyan are anything less of an event. For this new stag- presented what was essentially a mixed media ing of Krapp’s Last Tape Colgan lined up Michael production, since a close up of Gambon’s face Gambon and great anticipation surrounded the was projected on to a screen (as in the TV ver- casting of one of the very greatest contemporary sion) while we simultaneously saw his corporeal stage and film actors in the role. It is the first time body in front of us. We had the opportunity to In This Issue: Gambon has played it; the most recent interpret- study Gambon’s changing expression, and what er (in the past decade or so) was John Hurt, twice Beckett’s text calls ‘the mounting tension of lis- at The Gate as well as in the ‘Beckett on Film’ tening’ as he silently attends to the voice of a Tribute to Avigdor project. Gambon has made several notable ap- woman. A fifty-something man alone in his room Arikha Performance Reviews from Dublin, Melbourne and Chicago Conferences Reviews from Munich, Montréal and Gda´nsk Reviews of Books by Friedman and McDonald Fall 2010 Volume 33 No.2 Michael Gambon in Gate Krapp. Photo by Pat Redmond. listening to a voice that is not present: this is what unites the the opening movements. There is of course the business two Beckett characters. with the banana, with Krapp orally fixating on it before The difference, of course, is the voice. The role of Joe is slipping on the peel. (The banana was thrown into the a silent one, combining initial physical mime with screen wings, not into the audience, perhaps reflecting health acting in close up. Krapp, on the other hand, after his open- concerns.) This was beautifully complemented by Gam- ing business with the bananas and the setting up of the tape bon’s reading of the line, declaring his resolve regarding recorder, gets to speak and to try out his vocal chords on a bananas—‘Cut ‘em out!’—through understatement rather word like ‘spool’. Famously, Krapp is a man of more than than vehemence. When he was on his feet Krapp played one voice. As he plays a tape from thirty years before, the with the light and shade surrounding his table, stepping old man’s ‘cracked voice [and] distinctive enunciation’ is from one to the other and then back again, before repeating replaced by a ‘strong voice’ and a ‘rather pompous’ one the movement several times. at that. Gambon’s younger voice was distinctly plummier The lighting (by James McConnell) did not have the than the more guttural voice of the present, shedding affec- stark alternation between light and dark which is specified tation. But more interestingly the first was a recognizably in the text and which earlier productions have tended to Anglo-Irish voice in its intonation, the second a grittier follow. Instead, there was a diffusion of faint light growing Dublinese. This ‘distinctive’ Anglo-Irishness linked Gam- less as the table receded but still rendering the whole room bon to the originator of the role and the man for whom it dimly visible. (No set designer was credited.) This made was written, Patrick Magee. Both Gambon and Magee have for a less immediately dramatic opening, as did Gambon’s and had long and distinguished apparently aimless wanderings careers on the English stage, around and on and off the and can elocute with the “Krapp’s concentration on the stage (where it was less best of them. But there is a clear Krapp was fortify- distinctive Irish intonation various women from his past even ing himself with drink). in their vocal array which more sharply reveals them as The effect was to natu- they can modulate at will. mother figures, with the urgent and ralise the environment Gambon, who like Colgan and hence the character, to was born and raised on replayed ‘let me in’ a desire to be make the audience feel as Dublin’s Northside, made let back into the womb.” if we had entered his liv- his Irish stage debut at The ing space and were drawn Gate in 1962. In this produc- into intimate communion with tion at the same venue in 2010, there was a real sense of him. By the time he played his tape, we had settled down an actor getting back in touch with his roots, deploying with Krapp to listen to it with a heightened interest and everything he had learned along the way but also centering sensitivity. himself in a more Dublin-oriented older Krapp. Gambon’s What I had not been prepared for was how much emo- sense of biological and theatrical origins may be part of tion is conveyed by Krapp’s description of his mother’s why Michael Colgan has been so successful in getting him death. I will never forget the palpable thickening in Gam- to forego lucrative movie contracts long enough to take bon’s voice as he read the lines about the ‘moments’ after a succession of leading roles at The Gate. On this occa- the blind went down. The brilliance of the passage lies sion, what also caused surprise was to see Colgan himself in its concentration on Krapp’s activity with the dog, the listed as director of the production. But it is often forgot- latter ‘yelping and pawing’ until finally he is given the ten that he began his career (at The Abbey) as a director, ball. It serves of course as a displacement of what Krapp in charge of the Kerry storyteller Eamonn Kelly and his is feeling with regard to his mother, but the lines also ex- one-man shows. What was required then of him as a di- press a compassion for all living creatures that goes beyond rector was what was equally required on this occasion: to egotism. The centrality of the death of the mother was create the conditions and encourage the atmosphere in also foregrounded in this production by its one textual which a master actor could exercise his talents to the full. curiosity: the omission of the reference to the ‘last illness This was achieved on the opening night at The Gate, and of his father’ when the thirty-nine-year old Krapp refers subsequently, with full houses held in thrall as Gambon to an even earlier tape he had been listening to. (There are made the stage his own. arguably three lines about him if we identify the father as He did so from a deliberately slow and tentative begin- the one who says ‘Take his mind off his homework’ and ning. Not only sitting at the table, as the stage directions as the ‘he’ in the reiterated ‘maybe he was right’.) On require, but lying on it, with his head buried, either asleep opening night (29 April 2010), had Gambon forgotten this or hiding. Then slowly a hand emerges, like a creature line? It was not included at a later performance either, so with an independent existence, sinuously exploring the in the end its omission has to be seen as intentional. Ac- space. When Krapp’s face appears, it has all the decrepi- cordingly, Krapp’s concentration on the various women tude one would require, with its askew thinning grey hair from his past even more sharply reveals them as mother and its furrowed brows. But there is also a wide-awake figures, with the urgent and replayed ‘let me in’ a desire stare with open eyes that suggests the face of a baby first to be let back into the womb. This interpretation is of a encountering the world. A sense of playfulness animated piece with the child-like, wondering, exploring aspect of 2 Gambon’s Krapp, struggling to be born anew as he sits among discarded tapes and scrunched up pieces of paper, ‘CALL FOR PAPERS’ the detritus of discarded selves. Samuel Beckett Working Group The last time I reviewed Krapp’s Last Tape at The Gate, Osaka, Japan the live broadcast of the review on Irish radio coincided 7-12 August 2011 with 9/11, between the falling of the two towers. Although this event was not mentioned overtly in the review, it in- Next year’s Working Group will be meeting formed everything the interviewer and I said. What struck at the International Federation of Theatre me later was the greatness of Beckett’s play in being ad- Research (IFTR) Annual Conference in Osaka, equate to the awfulness of the historic moment, its ongoing Japan, 7-12 August 2011 (the Working Group prophetic ability to address world events long after its will meet on the 7th and 8th August).