Jonathan Biggins. Photo: John Marmaras
This is 50 minutes of theatre magic! Into the gloom of dark, dingy and dusty set comes a dishevelled and dusty old man. At the back of the stage is a tip’s worth of old metal filing cabinets. In the centre is a desk and on it a tape recorder and a microphone. Tangled ribbons of shiny recording tape litter the room. The old man shuffles about, he sighs, he opens and closes his filing drawers, he eats a banana, he sits, he stands, he finds something to drink. Sometimes he looks sullen, sometimes dark, sometimes annoyed, sometimes bemused. He says nothing for about 10 minutes, but he tells us a lot – thanks to a masterful performance from Jonathan Biggins as Krapp.
We are at ‘an evening in the future’ and it is Krapp’s 69th birthday. He is preparing for his annual recount of a life brimming with fading hopes and stark disappointments. When eventually he speaks, we listen and will him to say more.
Red Line Productions presents this Beckett one-hander, which fuses the tragic and the comic in its recollections of time, fate, memory, loneliness, youth, mortality and the love that gets away. Every year Krapp hauls out his tape recorder and summarises events in his life. This year, after much deliberation and hesitation, he chooses to listen to one of his previous tapes – the one filed as Box 3, Spool 5, containing the thoughts of his 39-year-old self. Here is a more confident and ebullient Krapp, who in turn reminisces on his 20-something self. The follies of youth. For the most part, 69-year-old Krapp finds this derisory, sometimes it dredges up sadness.
It may only be 50 minutes in length, but every second counts here as the past rewinds and is commented upon. There is much to be said, and much to be gleaned by what isn’t spoken. Biggins is a master of nuanced expression, and Krapp’s mood shifts as he is faced with a life full of opportunities lost thanks to his obsession with his magnum opus – which sold all of 17 copies and 11 of them to libraries. He fast-forwards and then keeps rewinding the tape to one erotic interlude. One moment that could have taken his life somewhere else. But didn’t.
Gale Edwards directs this short work on the Old Fitz’s tiny stage with great precision, and with a big stage presence in Biggins. Brian Thomson’s set suggests a life past its use-by date, Veronique Bennet’s lighting is all shadows, adding to suggestions of decay, and the whole speaks to Krapp’s own mortality. “Perhaps my best years are gone,” he declares, “…but I wouldn’t want them back.” He can’t have them back.
Highly recommended.
Until 14 December. Tickets $58 to $65
