Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” at The Warehouse Theatre

review by Stephanie Geter Young 

If I tell you that the Warehouse Theatre’s latest production is good for you, you’ll have visions of brussels sprouts, or church, or the high school poetry unit. If I tell you it’s shattering, poignant, life-altering, you might be cringing for the latest Hallmark endeavor. 

“Krapp’s Last Tape” is none of those things, so we’ll skip the adjectives; Beckett certainly did. He billed it as a “short stage monologue.” Short yes, but there’s more meat in this one-man portrait than in a whole season of your average theatre fare. Keep in mind, Beckett won the Nobel prize for “short stage” pieces such as this one. 

Krapp (Crosby Hunt) has come to his den to record his final retrospective. Each year, it’s the same birthday routine. Wind up an old tape, listen as your younger self mocks youthful folly, falls in and out of illnesses and loves. Then muster up the courage to record this year’s latest cynicism, quixotic obsessions, failing mental powers, despair. As the title suggests, this will be Krapp’s last recording, and possibly, his best. 

It’s the first time he’s really questioned the past. The first time he’s wondered if maturity really demands a condemnation of youth. The first time he’s allowed himself to think it might have been better for him to pursue those wild relationships, be again those people, those places. Maybe once was not enough. Maybe this year, there are no words to record. And for the first time in Krapp’s 69 years, he actually tries to sing.  

Lest you expect an aria, I should note here that Krapp is a clown, complete with floppy costume and banana-peel antics. He is the distillation and intensification of all our hopes and follies, even our repeated mistakes. He’s at the end of his life, he’s very nearly blind, and he has a perverse craving for the yellow fruit. A wild-haired Crosby Hunt succeeds in exploiting both the humor and the pathos of Krapp’s universal situation. He’s funny, even as he is pitiable. 

The set speaks almost as loudly as the play—perhaps I should say, with the play, since sets these days are supposed to be invisible containers. Kevin Frazier’s brilliant design eschews that thought, even as it tosses aside Beckett’s single ring of stark light, favoring instead an assortment of incandescent bulbs, each in its own state of decay. The filaments flicker and fade. They go out with a pop, only to burst on again with blinding illumination. They work with Hunt to shed light on Krapp’s mental state, his grasping after words and ideas, his synapses barely connecting, his glimmer of life, faint and fainter still. 

I’ll tell you now, you won’t leave the theatre happy. You won’t leave full of high hope and laughs. But since director Paul Savas has done his job well, you, like Krapp, will leave the stage haunted: what exactly are “those things worth having when all the dust has–when all my dust has settled. I close my eyes and try and imagine them.” Depressing maybe, but at least you’ll be thinking about these things before your last birthday. If only Krapp had been so lucky.

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Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape,” directed by Paul Savas; with Crosby Hunt

(Krapp). Set, light, and sound design by Kevin Frazier. Costume by Crosby Hunt and Paul Savas.

Presented by The Warehouse Theatre, 37 Augusta St., Greenville (864) 235-6948. Through September 28. Tickets $10. Recommended for a mature audience.

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