10 Questions About…

Friday night Patrick and I went to see Krapp’s Last Tape at the James Joyce Center. The Center is of O’Connell Street in an area we rarely visit at night – so that was fun.

Krapp’s Last Tape is a play by Samuel Beckett, who is kind of a favorite of mine. He does short, theatre of the absurd type shows. In this show, an older guy is listening to tapes he has made 30 years earlier talking about his life and loves gone by. During the show the actor uses an old tape player – forward, rewinding to get to the bits he wants to hear.

The actor was excellent. He looked the part, his timing was perfect, and his facial expressions were great. And then coup of coups for anyone who has seen this show – the tape machine broke. It was kind of like Godot jumping on stage and saying “I’m here! You can quit waiting.” I think Beckett would have loved it and the actor handled it in character.

The theater was very small – a room actually. So the audience all had to leave the room so that they could fix the technical difficulties and then we returned for the end of the show. The show was sold out – and everyone returned after the snafu.

Patrick got a picture of the stage and me at the James Joyce Center.