Review: Scena Theatre's KRAPP'S LAST TAPE a Moving Tribute to Beckett, Mortality

A wild-haired figure emerges from the darkness—a man, unkempt.  Nearly blind, he holds his watch inches from his eyes and feels his way around his desk.  Pulls out a box containing reel-to-reel tapes.  Hauls out a reel-to-reel tape player—large, clumsy, old, and dodgy like its owner.  He fancies a banana or two, which he keeps stowed away (for safe keeping?) in another desk drawer, not too close to the tapes.  Drops one banana peel on the floor after contemplating it up close—a peel which he soon slips on.  Chucks both it, and the peel of his next banana, and what the hell let’s chuck the banana itself too, off into the void. 

And yes, that’s a metaphor you just saw unfolding onstage.

So begins Samuel Beckett’s enduring take on old age, comical decay, and the nearness of death now drawn that much nearer.  Krapp’s Last Tape is Scena Theatre’s contribution to a mini-Beckett festival that has popped up in our midst this past week, and it’s a poignant reminder of how Beckett foresaw demise—his, ours, everyone’s—with a combination of wry humor, and a resignation that sometimes borders on relief.

The centerpiece is an old man listening to a recording of his younger, smug self, who recounts a final farewell to a woman he seems to have been attached to—or maybe not?  The old man has to decide what to think about this punk, this stranger who claims to be himself; and as the recording and the play unfold, we have to look closely for signs of resolution, of judgment—which reveals itself, or at least seems to.  If there’s a word for nostalgia mingled with disgust, I bet the Germans have come up with one; but these mixed emotions are hinted at throughout this short one-man show.

As Krapp, Robert McNamara—Scena Theatre’s founder and Artistic Director—revives a production originally directed by the late Gabriele Jakobi, whose choreography here has rendered Beckett as complex as originally intended. 

Krapp’s clumsiness, his frustration with the dullness of his room, mingled with frustration with his mis-spent youth (but aren’t all our youths mis-spent?), all are in evidence.  Add to this the solitude of Set Designer Michael Stepowany’s old desk topped off by a naked light bulb in this intimate, DC Arts Center space, and they all combine to create an evening that is ripe with potential for our own thoughts, our own pasts.  Costume Designer Alisa Mandel’s discreet, muted tones for Krapp blend in seamlessly with the idea of a gathering dark.

Sound Designer Laura Schlachtmeyer has created the recording that Krapp obsesses about, and it has that faded monophonic tinge, with that insufferable know-it-all voice of a 30-something egoist coming through the speakers.  McNamara’s Krapp listens, then hauls out a microphone to record his latest audio diary entry, more of a riposte, in which he distances himself forcefully from that disembodied blast from the past.  There are signs of life in that lusty old goat too, which he acknowledges with a grin.

The denouement, as that scratchy old tape is played once more, and this time to its conclusion, is touchingly directed—no spoilers here, but it is a fitting response to the dying of the light, of Krapp’s light, and our own.  The past is present, and worth cherishing.

Production photo:  Robert McNamara in Krapp’s Last Tape. Photo courtesy of J. Yi Photography.

Running Time:  45 minutes with no intermission.

Krapp’s Last Tape runs through March 1 at the DC Arts Center (DCAC), 2438 18th St.  NW, Washington, D.C. =, 20009.  For Tickets, visit: