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Krapp's Last Tape and Other Shorter Plays
'Krapp's Last Tape' was first performed by Patrick Magee at the Royal Court Theatre in October 1958. This volume brings together 'Krapp's Last Tape' and Beckett's other shorter works or 'dramaticules' written for the stage.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
About the author
Samuel Beckett
701 books6,054 followersSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
February 24, 2013
[Night. Interior. The REVIEWER, an elderly man, is seated alone in front of his laptop; a large screen above the stage shows that he is currently looking at the Goodreads page for "Krapp's Last Tape". Sounds of thunder, lightning, torrential rain from outside. The REVIEWER shakes his head, reaches into a drawer, changes his mind, reaches in again, takes out a banana, eats it. He continues to look at the same page. He takes out another banana and eats that too.]
REVIEWER: I've reviewed it eighteen times.
[He clicks his way to one of his reviews, which is clearly very long. As scrolls up and down, we see fragments of text:
REVIEWER: Jesus Christ, what a fucking wanker. Did I really write that?
[He shakes his head]
REVIEWER: Wanker. Let's look at one of the autobiographical ones.
[He clicks to a second review:
REVIEWER: Here's my first one.
[He clicks to another review. The whole text consists of the single line:
REVIEWER: Well, at least that's honest.
[He clicks back to the second review and scrolls down:
REVIEWER: I shouldn't have done that. She never liked me touching her hair.
[He starts to open another review, then suddenly closes the laptop.]
REVIEWER: Enough. I'm glad I don't have to do any more of those.
CURTAIN
REVIEWER: I've reviewed it eighteen times.
[He clicks his way to one of his reviews, which is clearly very long. As scrolls up and down, we see fragments of text:
A harsher Proust, in a major key and without the redemptive quality of art... reductio ad absurdum of the theatre of the absurd... distillation... semantics...He jumps up and paces around the room.]
REVIEWER: Jesus Christ, what a fucking wanker. Did I really write that?
[He shakes his head]
REVIEWER: Wanker. Let's look at one of the autobiographical ones.
[He clicks to a second review:
I sat, looking at the stage, but more at my companion, who was leaning comfortably against me, sound asleep. I wondered if I should adjust her dress, which was showing a generous amount of cleavage; but in the end, I only smoothed her hair. She turned towards me and smiled, half pleased, half irritated. I couldn't tell if she was was still asleep.The REVIEWER suddenly screams twice, then smiles at the audience.]
REVIEWER: Here's my first one.
[He clicks to another review. The whole text consists of the single line:
I DONT GET IT. BORING.He shrugs.]
REVIEWER: Well, at least that's honest.
[He clicks back to the second review and scrolls down:
... I wondered if I should adjust her dress, which was showing a generous amount of cleavage; but in the end, I only smoothed her hair...He starts shaking his head again.]
REVIEWER: I shouldn't have done that. She never liked me touching her hair.
[He starts to open another review, then suddenly closes the laptop.]
REVIEWER: Enough. I'm glad I don't have to do any more of those.
CURTAIN
March 25, 2021
White world, great trouble, not a sound, only the embers, sound of dying, dying glow
Buster Keaton. Waves crashing. Burgess Meredith playing recordings of his own spoken word performances. Crashing waves. Ms. Rooney being helped into a lorry. The horror, the horror, Silence.
It is easy to gauge how impactful these were upon publication. I believe despite our iEfforts to fill in the silence we remain as bleak as ever.
Buster Keaton. Waves crashing. Burgess Meredith playing recordings of his own spoken word performances. Crashing waves. Ms. Rooney being helped into a lorry. The horror, the horror, Silence.
It is easy to gauge how impactful these were upon publication. I believe despite our iEfforts to fill in the silence we remain as bleak as ever.
November 11, 2012
saw john hurt play krapp last week in culver city.
when he spoke that last bit about the slitted eyes and the light i audibly moaned. transcendental stuff.
"She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes. [Pause.] I asked her to look at me and after a few moments— [Pause.]— after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadows and they opened. [Pause. Low.] Let me in.”
when he spoke that last bit about the slitted eyes and the light i audibly moaned. transcendental stuff.
"She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes. [Pause.] I asked her to look at me and after a few moments— [Pause.]— after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadows and they opened. [Pause. Low.] Let me in.”
July 4, 2013
Discussed with Molloy.
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
Read
February 8, 2023Krapp’s Last Tape is utterly brilliant. There are depths to plumb here—and I will wait for a second read in order to fully process. The effect of technology on mortality and consciousness…
February 12, 2023
beckett could write a one sentence play that goes “life is hard” then edit it down to “life hard” and i’d start clapping and cheering and throwing up
November 24, 2018
Excellent selection that makes me think I should read his complete works to add to my box of thinking tools. Seemingly more personal than his longer plays, if partly for focalisation, though my favourite quale is still the leaf on the tree in the second act of Godot, these dealing more with human limits and deterioration. Don't forget that the absurd is itself absurd, or whatever, and that it is itself struable.
October 30, 2020
Young people and what to do about them was one of the great issues for middle class America in the sixties. Containment was one of the answers. My hometown, Park Ridge, had had a number of youth centers, but all had closed when I dropped out of Grinnell for the 1971-72 school year because of impending prosecution by the local draft board.
Two of us put our mind to the matter one night at my house and came up with the idea of starting a process which might result in the creation of a new alternative for our peers, a youth center we'd own and operate ourselves, on our terms.
The trick was to get the momentum to accomplish this end. We had no money. Indeed, I had only debt, a poorly paying job and the possible prospect of incarceration for draft resistance. What we needed was a credible movement.
So we called a meeting. Well, a person or persons unknown called a meeting. What we did was create three anonymous fliers, one with a leftist slant to be distributed in and around the high schools; another with a rightist slant to be displayed in the business and wealthier sectors of town; a third with a sober, intellectual approach. All announced a meeting about youth and youth problems to be held in a park district fieldhouse. During the course of one long night, we plastered thousands of these pieces the length and breadth of Park Ridge.
The meeting, amazingly, was quite successful as were those to follow. What we'd wanted from the start proved to be the will of the masses. Now the trick was to get the money to purchase, or the political power to be given, a suitable property while, in the meantime, having fun.
In the course of this lengthy meantime we hosted cultural events, mostly weekly rock concerts with one dollar admissions, all well attended, but we were open to almost anything.
A recent high school graduate and thespian, Walter, came to us with a proposal. He wanted to produce, direct and perform a play. He just needed a venue, some money for a simple set and some publicity. The result was 'Krapp's Last Tape', a one-person drama about an old man--played in this case by a very young one, albeit credibly given the poor lighting called for. It was no easy sell, Beckett not quite inspiring the hormonally charged masses like Led Zeppelin did, but it came off with enough of an audience to cover almost all expenses. I liked it, but then I was long more comfortable with suicidal ideation than with the notion of publicly dancing.
Two of us put our mind to the matter one night at my house and came up with the idea of starting a process which might result in the creation of a new alternative for our peers, a youth center we'd own and operate ourselves, on our terms.
The trick was to get the momentum to accomplish this end. We had no money. Indeed, I had only debt, a poorly paying job and the possible prospect of incarceration for draft resistance. What we needed was a credible movement.
So we called a meeting. Well, a person or persons unknown called a meeting. What we did was create three anonymous fliers, one with a leftist slant to be distributed in and around the high schools; another with a rightist slant to be displayed in the business and wealthier sectors of town; a third with a sober, intellectual approach. All announced a meeting about youth and youth problems to be held in a park district fieldhouse. During the course of one long night, we plastered thousands of these pieces the length and breadth of Park Ridge.
The meeting, amazingly, was quite successful as were those to follow. What we'd wanted from the start proved to be the will of the masses. Now the trick was to get the money to purchase, or the political power to be given, a suitable property while, in the meantime, having fun.
In the course of this lengthy meantime we hosted cultural events, mostly weekly rock concerts with one dollar admissions, all well attended, but we were open to almost anything.
A recent high school graduate and thespian, Walter, came to us with a proposal. He wanted to produce, direct and perform a play. He just needed a venue, some money for a simple set and some publicity. The result was 'Krapp's Last Tape', a one-person drama about an old man--played in this case by a very young one, albeit credibly given the poor lighting called for. It was no easy sell, Beckett not quite inspiring the hormonally charged masses like Led Zeppelin did, but it came off with enough of an audience to cover almost all expenses. I liked it, but then I was long more comfortable with suicidal ideation than with the notion of publicly dancing.
December 11, 2015
December of Drama 2015, day ten
I'm reading a play every day (have I established that?) and I selected them in advance, so I didn't read the radio plays Embers or All Fall Down which are included in this volume. When it comes to Krapp's Last Tape, I can understand and even agree with those reviewers who call it brilliant, genius, a masterpiece, etc. etc. but I can't say that I necessarily enjoyed it all that much. And the blurb on the back: 'shattering drama,' really? That seems to overstate it just a tad. It's a bitter artistic statement, sure, but far from 'shattering.' I would love to see it staged, however-- more so than any of the other plays I've read so far, except for Thom Pain. It is original, to say the least, and compellingly bizarre.
Anyone else craving a banana or three?
I'm reading a play every day (have I established that?) and I selected them in advance, so I didn't read the radio plays Embers or All Fall Down which are included in this volume. When it comes to Krapp's Last Tape, I can understand and even agree with those reviewers who call it brilliant, genius, a masterpiece, etc. etc. but I can't say that I necessarily enjoyed it all that much. And the blurb on the back: 'shattering drama,' really? That seems to overstate it just a tad. It's a bitter artistic statement, sure, but far from 'shattering.' I would love to see it staged, however-- more so than any of the other plays I've read so far, except for Thom Pain. It is original, to say the least, and compellingly bizarre.
Anyone else craving a banana or three?
February 19, 2022
This was just okay. I was really only reading it for Krapp’s Last Tape… the rest of the plays were meh
July 31, 2020
Of all the authors I have read, I find Beckett to be the most challenging by far. In much the same way as reading textbooks and scholarly works (meaning books meant to teach first and foremost and not to entertain or take one's mind off the day or transport you to another world/time/perspective), reading Beckett forces you to pay full attention to every single word. You can't skim Beckett, or if you do, then you are not reading Beckett at all, for by skipping or eliding or jumping ahead you miss the point. The words, the cadences, the repetitions, the minimalism, the circularity, the now-ness. Beckett demands your attention and immersion, or maybe he just expects it. Why else read? Why words? Why? I won't get into over-reviewing each specific text in any Beckett book as I find that defeatist, or maybe beyond my ken. Often it’s merely words on the page given meaning by how the reader interprets/intuits/internalizes them. I say Beckett is unequaled, unmatched, unsurpassed, but that is just one opinion. Still, I say read him, often, and again…
So, genius.
My first exposure to Samuel Beckett was back in my 20’s when I bought a Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) CD titled “Sound For Spaces”. One of the tracks is “A Piece Of A Monologue”. I was entranced. As a result I sought out Beckett’s writings and fell in love with them all.
Beckett’s works for the stage are always brilliant, always meticulously plotted, often rather short, and, at times, quite confounding in their bleak simplicity. Even so, they carry aspects of his weighty prose work and leave you with much to consider. I have read several of these plays in single volumes and in other collections, so while all the plays were not new to me, re-reading Beckett is often more rewarding than the first go-round.
Selections I enjoyed the most: “A Piece Of A Monologue”, “Rockaby”, and “Krapp’s Last Tape”. The first two have much the same feel to them, while the last one has such a fabulous set up for the stage. Beautiful.
So, genius.
My first exposure to Samuel Beckett was back in my 20’s when I bought a Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) CD titled “Sound For Spaces”. One of the tracks is “A Piece Of A Monologue”. I was entranced. As a result I sought out Beckett’s writings and fell in love with them all.
Beckett’s works for the stage are always brilliant, always meticulously plotted, often rather short, and, at times, quite confounding in their bleak simplicity. Even so, they carry aspects of his weighty prose work and leave you with much to consider. I have read several of these plays in single volumes and in other collections, so while all the plays were not new to me, re-reading Beckett is often more rewarding than the first go-round.
Selections I enjoyed the most: “A Piece Of A Monologue”, “Rockaby”, and “Krapp’s Last Tape”. The first two have much the same feel to them, while the last one has such a fabulous set up for the stage. Beautiful.
May 12, 2017
this was pretty pointless.
sounds like a long nonsensical blabber about pretty much nothing. i found absolutely no meaning in the whole narration, except that maybe krapp has a deadly addiction to bananas.
sounds like a long nonsensical blabber about pretty much nothing. i found absolutely no meaning in the whole narration, except that maybe krapp has a deadly addiction to bananas.
February 7, 2022
Disclaimer: I only read Krapp’s Last Tape.
I’m hesitant to say this is a bad play simply because I didn’t understand it, but also there is no glory ib writing something that’s too difficult for the average person to understand. Or perhaps there’s no meaning at all to this play. I also famously do NOT enjoy one acts, so I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe it’s better on stage??? But the text is not interesting at all.
I’m hesitant to say this is a bad play simply because I didn’t understand it, but also there is no glory ib writing something that’s too difficult for the average person to understand. Or perhaps there’s no meaning at all to this play. I also famously do NOT enjoy one acts, so I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe it’s better on stage??? But the text is not interesting at all.
May 15, 2022
Came for Krapp, stayed for Mrs. Rooney. A collection of shorter plays and pieces - at least, shorter in terms of text. Both Krapp's Last Tape and All that Fall are wonderfully bitter, somber pieces revolving around loss and aging that end in similar pits. Those themes are arguable carried on in Embers, though I enjoyed that one less - too crude and singular, maybe. The final pieces of mime are less interesting to read than to see, I imagine, though the first mime is more potent in its futility and bleakness.
July 5, 2022
Titular piece is fantastic romantic dystopia, maybe the best of late Beckett. Next couple pieces hold up pretty well. Reprint of one mime piece (also in Odds and Ends I think) that is quite good, another mime piece that is quite bad.
July 17, 2011
Krapp's Last Tape--more focused and emotionally coherent than many of Beckett's other works--builds to a conclusion that is profoundly moving. If you have an extra hour or so, search for a performance of KLT on YouTube.
December 2, 2011
Going to see John Hurt perform this tonight at the Shakespeare Theater! Super excited!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifesty...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifesty...
November 4, 2009
One of Beckett's best. A short work about memory and technology. Utterly devastating.
November 12, 2013
تسجيل إذاعي إنتاج: إذاعة البرنامج الثاني من القاهرة
https://archive.org/details/P2-dra-Kr...
أحلى بكتير مسرحية بالإنجليزي
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYDGlC...
https://archive.org/details/P2-dra-Kr...
أحلى بكتير مسرحية بالإنجليزي
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYDGlC...
May 24, 2023
"She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes. [Pause.] I asked her to look at me and after a few moments— [Pause.]— after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadows and they opened. [Pause. Low.] Let me in.”
My rating is mostly for Krapp's Last Tape. The other plays are also effective in portraying the bleakness of human existence, and there's definitely very obvious connections thematically between the five "pieces" here. The last two are very short and without dialogue. I watched those and listened to the first three while reading. I think you have to in order to get the full impact of the works. "All That Fall" and "Embers" were written for radio, so they were intended to only be listened to. I watched a bit of one version of Krapp's Last Tape after listening to it, and that was effective too. This was my first exposure to Beckett's work, and it is all quite strange and at times inscrutable. The kind of work that only becomes more meaningful with repeated readings or viewings. Krapp's Last Tape is brief, a one character show featuring Krapp in his old age listening to a tape of Krapp as a young man. Again, another reading would lend me a deeper understanding, but the surface level themes are quite moving to me. Krapp is defeated and embittered at the end of his life, and it seems as if there were only a few (or only one?) moment(s) in his entire life that really shone through. Very brief, very fleeting happiness. Or that's what I felt after reading. And it does make one wonder about one's own life, and the position one will be in at the end. What will we remember? Even if our lives are filled with many happy moments, how many will bleed through the suffering we may face at the end? I liked that such a brief dramatic piece was able to stir up these kinds of thoughts and anxieties in me, even if those thoughts themselves are fleeting.
My rating is mostly for Krapp's Last Tape. The other plays are also effective in portraying the bleakness of human existence, and there's definitely very obvious connections thematically between the five "pieces" here. The last two are very short and without dialogue. I watched those and listened to the first three while reading. I think you have to in order to get the full impact of the works. "All That Fall" and "Embers" were written for radio, so they were intended to only be listened to. I watched a bit of one version of Krapp's Last Tape after listening to it, and that was effective too. This was my first exposure to Beckett's work, and it is all quite strange and at times inscrutable. The kind of work that only becomes more meaningful with repeated readings or viewings. Krapp's Last Tape is brief, a one character show featuring Krapp in his old age listening to a tape of Krapp as a young man. Again, another reading would lend me a deeper understanding, but the surface level themes are quite moving to me. Krapp is defeated and embittered at the end of his life, and it seems as if there were only a few (or only one?) moment(s) in his entire life that really shone through. Very brief, very fleeting happiness. Or that's what I felt after reading. And it does make one wonder about one's own life, and the position one will be in at the end. What will we remember? Even if our lives are filled with many happy moments, how many will bleed through the suffering we may face at the end? I liked that such a brief dramatic piece was able to stir up these kinds of thoughts and anxieties in me, even if those thoughts themselves are fleeting.
Read
March 23, 2020This is a short collection of dramatic monologues by the Irish/French writer Samuel Beckett. So, I need to start off by stating that I couldn’t possibly rate this post because I am definitively ill-equipped to offer judgment of what I read here. I will discuss what I felt about it and the interesting aspects of the production (this is an audiobook) but otherwise, I will leave the criticism to those who know about these things.
There are four pieces in this collection. In the first, an older man (Krapp) listens to audiotapes of his younger self. In the piece, we are not merely treated to his listening of these tapes but in addition we get the odd shambling of the man himself as he does. For example, there’s a lot to do with the eating of bananas.
The other pieces in this collection are dramatic monologues. Most of them deal with an internalized set of verbalizations or thoughts or maybe the impressionistic sense of thoughts. I am sympathetic to the desire to collect thoughts on the page and by this I do mean straight out thoughts. Human thought is a bizarre beast and we tend to think they come from words or images, but I tend to see my own thoughts as the overlay of images, even a series of images. In addition, we also have the mesh of words and formulations of interpretations on those images as they occur immediately on top of those images.
So to try to formulate that in text is deeply impressive, and probably impossible. I will return before too long with some of Beckett’s fiction. I have read a few of his plays, but this is a departure for me otherwise.
There are four pieces in this collection. In the first, an older man (Krapp) listens to audiotapes of his younger self. In the piece, we are not merely treated to his listening of these tapes but in addition we get the odd shambling of the man himself as he does. For example, there’s a lot to do with the eating of bananas.
The other pieces in this collection are dramatic monologues. Most of them deal with an internalized set of verbalizations or thoughts or maybe the impressionistic sense of thoughts. I am sympathetic to the desire to collect thoughts on the page and by this I do mean straight out thoughts. Human thought is a bizarre beast and we tend to think they come from words or images, but I tend to see my own thoughts as the overlay of images, even a series of images. In addition, we also have the mesh of words and formulations of interpretations on those images as they occur immediately on top of those images.
So to try to formulate that in text is deeply impressive, and probably impossible. I will return before too long with some of Beckett’s fiction. I have read a few of his plays, but this is a departure for me otherwise.
Read
May 9, 2021reread a bunch of short plays for class—certainly not the plays in this edition, but i’ve read all of his plays anyway so w/e..... anyway, needed a place to mark the day Krapp’s Last Tape finally got to me, and it’s because in addition to rereading i also listened to an audio performance. simply devastating. on the page alone it’s too grim, overly dour in the way that often turns people off to Beckett. hearing the words spoken—and especially, i cannot stress this enough—hearing the differences between the voice of the old Krapp and Krapp at 39, that is what makes the narrative truly click into place. which is appropriate, because it is a play about the voice, about recording technology, about the persistence of ghostly old selves into the present through mechanical reproduction. it is a play about replaying moments in your life, something i am sure will become more—what, painful? more common?—the longer i live. it is already one of the more painful activities available to me. so it’s a scary, heartbreaking play, a depiction of the way we live on old intimacy. does Krapp-aged-39 really mean that he wouldn’t trade his present for his past life? and does the older Krapp, so many years down the same path, still agree with him? no way of knowing. what an awful question.
August 9, 2021
A slight collection of two radio plays commissioned by the BBC, two mimes, and a one-act written specifically for Patrick Magee, Krapp's Last Tape. It's the latter that gets the focus and the rating here, as a devastating work that only grows in poignancy. Few works prophecy the sensation of reading articles and posts you made as a teenager or undergrad, things you wrote you thought were funny or cool, and seeing images of yourself in social media from a decade ago. Krapp's Last Tape is the shadow of the way Facebook reminds you of what you were up to once upon a time, the existential despair of being steeped in your recorded past, those versions of you never leaving you in ways that were once figurative and are now terribly literal.
Takeaway:
"Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back."
Takeaway:
"Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back."
September 5, 2019
Beckett is tough reading. His jagged alienation is as comfortable as reclining on a mattress without any batting or wading in cold water only to step on an urchin or chipping a tooth on a blind date or pinching your finger in the car door of a '67 Corvair Monza or biting on aluminum foil or falling asleep in a laundromat in Cleveland or locking your car keys in your car in the middle of the night or losing a longtime close friend to cancer.
Krapp recalls the lack of connection and intimacy 30 years prior. He never had a good memory so his memories late in life stink like a dank cellar. The bifurcation between the present and a mechanical reconstruction of his past via the tape recorder and the classification of tapes might appeal to an IRS accountant but for me, seemed as sterile as a weed patch in November.
I respect Beckett but I don't like his works.
Krapp recalls the lack of connection and intimacy 30 years prior. He never had a good memory so his memories late in life stink like a dank cellar. The bifurcation between the present and a mechanical reconstruction of his past via the tape recorder and the classification of tapes might appeal to an IRS accountant but for me, seemed as sterile as a weed patch in November.
I respect Beckett but I don't like his works.
May 16, 2022
Krapp's Last Tape was my strongest favorite among these, especially since the video performance I saw of it after I read it had John Hurt in the title role. Always a delight. I wanted to explore some more of Beckett's work after my reading of Waiting For Godot a couple years back, and I feel like this collection of radio and stage plays is a perfect companion book of his other types of work.
I am caught off-guard with how playful with language Beckett is, his characters who seem so depressed yet very rambling and wordy. His world view is bleak, like four straight shots of espresso. What I love most about his work, however, besides the absurd, is the humor.
I am caught off-guard with how playful with language Beckett is, his characters who seem so depressed yet very rambling and wordy. His world view is bleak, like four straight shots of espresso. What I love most about his work, however, besides the absurd, is the humor.
August 18, 2024
4.5/5
Honestly my order of favorites went chronologically through this collection. "Krapp's" was easily the best and then the pantomime works were odd--although, for Beckett, that doesn't meant they aren't good, just maybe not for me right now. The first three from this had me really meditative. "All That Fall" held a simple structure that so much slow cinema uses but oi it is still so effective. And "Embers" was really interesting; I didn't really understand its ending or that maybe it wasn't the best way to end it, but it's beginning and middle, and most of last section was so great.
Honestly my order of favorites went chronologically through this collection. "Krapp's" was easily the best and then the pantomime works were odd--although, for Beckett, that doesn't meant they aren't good, just maybe not for me right now. The first three from this had me really meditative. "All That Fall" held a simple structure that so much slow cinema uses but oi it is still so effective. And "Embers" was really interesting; I didn't really understand its ending or that maybe it wasn't the best way to end it, but it's beginning and middle, and most of last section was so great.
December 29, 2019
This is Beckett renown play Krapp’s last tape accompanied by All that fall and Embers, finishing with act without words I & II. This continues the absurdist way of life in the 50s after ww2... how tia black comedy represent the absurdity of life and how it revolves around with pretty much none sense and meaningless air... and pretty much a representation of our tenure in this world.
August 24, 2024
Krapp:
Very good, you can tell it was written in English. I like how it was written for the guy I listened to perform it.
Breath: oh bore off Beckett
Play:
I love the metaphorical idea of us as humans trapped in urns (where our ashes lay). The speech is quick which is rare for our Samuel! It’s the opposite on terms of delivery to loads of his other stuff.
Very good, you can tell it was written in English. I like how it was written for the guy I listened to perform it.
Breath: oh bore off Beckett
Play:
I love the metaphorical idea of us as humans trapped in urns (where our ashes lay). The speech is quick which is rare for our Samuel! It’s the opposite on terms of delivery to loads of his other stuff.
November 20, 2017
It's depressing. Great, but depressing.
It's short, so read it through a couple of times. After, go to YouTube and watch Patrick Magee's performance of this. It too is superb. It was actually written for him, so it's only right that you watch it.
It's short, so read it through a couple of times. After, go to YouTube and watch Patrick Magee's performance of this. It too is superb. It was actually written for him, so it's only right that you watch it.
May 12, 2019
Krapp's Last Tape and especially Not I were absolutely amazing. My first encounter with the work of Beckett and it made me very excited to take a look at his literature. I will be going through the rest of the plays shortly and will be on the lookout to see these two performed.
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