Beckett favorite Patrick Magee appears in this 1972 television film of Krapp’s Last Tape, directed by Donald McWhinnie. In this segment, the 39-year-old Krapp describes, in fragmented form, the Schopenhauerian “vision on the jetty” which in some interpretations is an autobiographical description of Beckett’s postwar epiphany that led to the creation of the “trilogy” novels and his mature plays. Note especially the violent, abstract natural imagery of the storm Krapp describes, an imagery often found in the work of the Expressionists. It is a fine performance of one of Beckett’s most powerful dramatic sequences:
That’s enormously powerful on film, but I can’t imagine it transmitting the same emotional wallop onstage anywhere beyond the first, oh, ten rows, orchestra or so.
How is it handled in the theater?
ACD
ACD,
The 2006 production of the play with Harold Pinter at the Royal Court took place in the 90-seat Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, and there have been few productions of the play in much larger auditoriums. Beckett appreciated the intimacy of both radio and television; there is a production notebook relating to his own direction of the play, and that would probably be worth consulting.