Robert Wilson enchants with Krapp's Last Tape

For the first time in years, Robert Wilson is back on stage by himself and he proves what a sublime performer he is. In Samuel Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, he plays an old man looking back at his younger self. His older self is almost without language, but with cries, grimaces and gestures. Wilson manages to reduce the piece to its bitter essence in playing that is both magnified, and minimalist. Never before has eating a banana produced such intense theatre.

When the curtain opens, we see a room of cabinets, a kind of media library. And piles of papers, books and boxes of tapes. Thunder and rain create an immense noise and the reflection of the rain is perfectly captured in the lighting.
In this almost biblical deluge, Krapp takes minutes to eat two bananas. But everything about it is right. The ritualistic way he looks sternly into the room and peels the banana with grand gestures. The look with which he puts the banana in his mouth. The moments when the banana hangs aimlessly out of his mouth. And then the eating itself: his facial expressions betray the self-reflection of someone who pretends that life still has something to offer him, but knows that the best times are behind him. And that he has made nothing of it. The magnified amazement at the taste of the banana. The fruit he has been eating in huge quantities for years, the tapes later reveal. The core of Beckett's play and of Wilson's almost 50-year theatre career in one scene. Wonderful.

Then Wilsons Krapp listens to the tapes of his 30 years back. It is his 69th birthday and traditionally he records on tape how his year has been. He listens to a younger version of himself, which in turn reflects on an even younger version of himself. The disgust only seems to increase with age, as does the realisation that it is now too late to turn the tide. With grimaces both reminiscent of Munch's The Scream and silent film.

Wilson has put the monologue on the cutting table. Sentiment has been removed, giving us an unobstructed glimpse into Krapp's soul. The exalted and theatrical nature of the performance get in the way of the light comfort Beckett does offer. This one a bleak look into nothingness. And the nothingness stares back.
Theatre does not have to be 'fun' to be stunning.