Krapp, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead In Yardley Gobion.

SPOOL

Meticulous, mesmerising and skilfully ambiguous are terms easily used when seeing the opening of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at The Theatre Royal in York. The stage was in darkness and eerily silent until Krapp turns on his singularly bright light over his singularly sturdy bureau-style table. The light says something bold, whereas Krapp sits still and silent for a significant amount of time, as if contemplating deeply over choices of what to do next to establish himself in the art of living and to reorientate the surrounding storage-type debris of what otherwise could be associated with an existential derelict.

Oldman’s boldness in facing such silences complemented by subtle gestures immediately drew the audience into Krapp’s world, where light and darkness negotiated internally and externally like a work of chiaroscuro art. Krapp breaks the silence, eventually, with a base, ritualistic masticating of bananas that was uneasily comical and was imbued with rebellious spirit as Krapp, as organism, made his significant gesture towards going on with life despite surrounding evidence to the contrary. Oldman’s skill in presenting the comedy in Beckett was evident in his acting out the scene of an old man reliving his childhood amusement of how playful sounding of words can persist throughout life’s ageing process. Krapp, in remembering, was finding childlike amusement in simple victories over the decaying process. Krapp’s enjoyment of the word spool proves to be a beautiful metaphor for how we embrace the cyclical apprehension of life as our spools of experience revolve around axis points in the recording machine, and in the brain as organic ‘machine’, yet the tape moves in a straight line on the heads to produce sound evidence of a life lived and recorded for future use of the past. As children we loved repetition of words, and spool is a particularly rounded word in our life – “spoooool” - which playfully resists the intrinsically linear nature of time. Oldman’s dramatic relatedness to the tape recorder was particularly moving as he touched it reverentially without over sentimentalising it, while acting out its powerful physical and intellectual significance for Krapp. Instead of being an existential derelict, we were quickly shown that Krapp possessed a resilient zest for living that resisted negativity in considering the drama before us as audience.

In amongst a kind stasis of memory, represented by the old dusty boxes, crates and files, all overlooking Krapp’s space with timeless menace, was a bureau table where Krapp decided to celebrate another birthday, his 69th, by once more unearthing his tape recorder – a sound ally to asserting his verbal presence in a surrounding silent darkness – to self reflect. Krapp picked a particular time in his life, his birthday tape thirty years ago, that had profound significance for him in recollecting the both the death of his mother and the ending of an intimate relationship at a time when he was apparently more vigorous in mind, body and spirit, and more social.

At thirty-nine he was still reminiscing, existing in his own mind even more than at present. Somewhat disillusioned at social exchange that had delivered two reversals of fortune, Krapp was still defiant as to the health of his then present self. What remained throughout his past and present selves was a healthy freedom of acquaintance with others with no further attachment necessary; Krapp was, and is full of ambiguity about life. This thematic ambiguity was encapsulated in a number of protracted silences throughout the play.

Oldman’s meticulous attention to these silences would please Beckett in realising his intention to dramatise uncertainty and ambiguity that contained a quiet, deeply contemplative confidence despite any perceived failures in Krapp’s life. When Krapp spoke, Oldman’s skill in maintaining the essential dynamic of that life, meant that we were appealed to on an emotional level, without mawkish sentimentality, to understand better Beckett’s project in presenting words and silence in dramatically uneasy yet complementary relatedness. Krapp at one point chastised his past self with a touch of sardonic humour saying, “Just been listening to that stupid bastard”, whilst at the same time moderating his seeming contempt with “he could be right!”. Oldman’s delivery of such inner dialogue was sensitive to the robust delicacy of this significant theme of ambiguity underpinning the whole drama. Accompanying this dramatisation of the vitality of consciousness was the physicality of Krapp’s ambiguous frustration when sweeping the other boxes of tapes onto the floor. These self-dialogue scenes of inner conflict beautifully enacted Krapp’s confusion of past and present, in sweeping away physical evidence – his aid to memory - which only served to puzzle and confuse him, deeply dramatising the ambiguity intended by Beckett. This jarring gesture also enhanced the emotionality of Krapp’s choice of entry into his past and his acute self-doubt, both active elements which combined to prevent any easy evaluation of superiority of now over then, of past over now, of memory over hope for the future, which at Krapp’s time of life was closer to darkness than it was to any light. Krapp’s current 69 year old self was contemplating a dynamic where absolute certainty could be seen and felt as deleterious to understanding oneself as intellectual time traveller that deems emotional reaction to seemingly ‘dead’ events in the past as unhelpful. Krapp’s past voice evokes, even provokes emotional immediacy that inescapably reconnects the temporal nature of self, its dualities and its base impulse to be free to seek and acknowledge events in one’s past as vital to any present notions of selfhood.

Oldman’s delivery was brilliant in showing, not telling, an essentially human wrestling match between body and mind, played through a device shouting the odds seemingly in temporal adjudication. The exclamatory “I wouldn’t want those times back...not with the fire in me now,” is both chastising his old self now but also his younger self then, who it seems was responsible for any current isolation from the world. It is not a certainty that condemns Krapp’s moving human past, but a human condition that affirms a self unity that enables him, like Molloy, Malone, Murphy et al, to go on, despite any evidence to the contrary, with a future that has, at a fundamental level, genuine free will to make decisions about whether or not to be in the world of others, or to spend time alone without succumbing to the vagaries of loneliness.

Oldman’s performance made a brilliant contribution to Beckett’s dramatic project epitomised by the character Krapp as bold and vitally human in the face of forces of nature: time; darkness; and silence that have the weight to crush and demoralise any human as if weak.

When any current activity with other(s) was discontinued, for whatever reason, there has to be an acknowledgement of a sense of loss and absence that can only be assuaged by an attitude of self reflection which offers the chance of further, deeper understanding. Oldman’s awareness of this essential trope in Krapp’s experience of himself in the world along temporal lines was always evident in his movement, gestures and vocal tenor – both then and now – in response to the tape recorder as fellow traveller and fellow dramatic persona.

The tape recorder is a physical symbol of the tremendous ambiguity of being able to revisit, repeat, and roguishly play with experience of life and its necessary elements of loss which are evidence of our humanness and our shared, intellectually at least, experience of being cognitively alive despite being in the inevitable process of dying and daily awareness of the accoutrements of decay. The tape recorder was both friend and foe in Krapp’s tussle with himself and time. When he attempted a new, possibly last recording, he was overwhelmingly drawn to his past self, despite himself, and returned to replay the vitality he still recognised in his present. Oldman’s delivery of this ‘new’ voice was effectively emotive and was full of contemplative and healthy doubt when considering the self as an ongoing dynamic in and through time.

The final scene was a superbly Beckettian understated crescendo, perfectly designed and portrayed by Oldman. As once again Krapp was static but movingly contemplating all he’d lived through in this, his drama, the stage lights were slowly withdrawn to eventually engulf Oldman/Krapp in the growing darkness. However, the tape recorder, still making Krapp’s bold and ambiguous statement about self affirmation despite any evidence to the contrary, became the final singular actor. Oldman’s/Krapp’s temporal voice was still asserting itself in an intense yet slowly diminishing spotlight. The rebellious, “No, I wouldn’t want that back, not with the fire in me now,” brought into beautiful conflict, contradiction, yet enthusing relatedness, the Krapp/other growing physically invisible but still railing against loss and absence and an uncertain future in which he had every intention of going on, despite the reductive darkness’s insistence on silence and disappearance. It was a touch of consummate skill in having the light shrink, yet still as it made disappear both itself and the tape recorder, but not the voice of Krapp. This imploding dramatic crescendo took time to linger long enough to transform the machine into a noiseless, awe inspiring starry, starry night. The light reflected on the spoooooling tape recorder created beautiful and dazzling twinkles that evoked thoughts of a universal nature, each star a voice in the vast, silent darkness. The scene was mesmerising and left the audience awestruck at what they’d witnessed; Oldman’s meticulousness had delivered a lasting moment of beauty in what on any other surface would be sad and was a fitting and exhilarating testimony to his skill as actor and director.

All in all Gary Oldman’s representation of Krapp was a wonderful experience.

Stag motionless staring before him. The pint runs on in silence.