The Irish have become the Samuel Beckett experts, thanks to such actors as Chris O'Neill, Barry McGovern, Jack McGowran and Patrick Magee, and to such directors as Michael Colgan. Head of Dublin's Gate Theatre for the past twenty-nine years, Colgan has mounted six Beckett Festivals, plus many individual performances of Beckett's plays.
Now he has teamed up with John Hurt on a fresh version of Krapp’s Last Tape, on tap at the Kirk Douglas Theater after successful runs in Washington, DC and New York.
For me, Beckett's sixty-year-old monologue has lost some of its power, perhaps because I've seen it so many times. A riff on loneliness and old age, the monologue seemed a tad too familiar this time around, not as deeply shocking and unsettling as before.
