If this review were to truly reflect the experience of Michael Gambon’s performance of Krapp’s Last Tape the first 20 lines would be blank, for there is nothing said on stage in the first 20 minutes and nothing to fill the silence but the creaking of the seats and the stage of the Duchess Theatre (proudly self-described as the West End’s smallest proscenium arch). Beckett gives detailed stage directions on rummaging through drawers for a banana, peeling the banana, almost slipping on the skin etc.; to this maudlin clowning, Gambon adds much pacing, running of fingers along desktop, clawing of hand and … an extra banana. He also shoots superb wild-eyed glances at the audience suggesting dementia or paranoia, as if he suspects we are watching him.
      With this billing and that great dollop of portentous silence, we expect a tour de force. But does the ‘Great Gambon’ bear comparison with Max Wall, Patrick Magee, Harold Pinter and the other celebrated performers of this monologue? Sadly, I fear not. The silent physical acting fails to mesmerise and though his face, as ever, appears as a map of a human conscience, this isn’t enough to deliver on the depths of profundity the audience feels lurk somewhere in this short play.
      Krapp’s Last Tape was written for the voice of Patrick Magee, it runs at well under an hour but has a power that can move in that time. Krapp is an aged dissolute, hardly sure if he is awake or asleep, marooned at a desk in front of the audience reviewing his life and its unfulfilled promise. It is his 69th birthday and, as with every year, he sits listening to tape accounts of his life recorded on birthdays past. He first listens to one he recorded in his youth; stops it, changes it, and listens to himself from thirty years ago repudiating his youth. Then he as he hears another tale of a lost love, he, in his turn flicks the switch of the tape recorder and viciously despises his own voice aged 39. When he comes to record his thoughts for the present year he finds he can’t, he has nothing left to say.
      Gambon’s marvelous facility for turning from tender warmth to malevolence on a single slight turn of the head is as beguiling as ever. He plays Krapp with his mouth partly open throughout the play, it is suggestive, even sexual, and apelike. It is also empty at the same time, just like the recording he fails to make on his last tape: “nothing to say, not a squeak”. However, in spite of Michael Gambon’s great talent, the director Michael Colgan’s decision to stretch out the silence at the start of the play, completely overbalances it. When the end comes, it comes very suddenly and you are left feeling this exploration of loss, self loathing and emptiness has not been fully accomplished.
Charles Taylor