Turning back to… the future

The Ivan Franko Theater (small stage in foyer) has staged the play Krapp’s Last Tape for friends and the mass media. This was an unofficial premiere as the Franko Theater has not yet received the permission of the writer Samuel Beckett’s heirs to stage the play.

This time the director and set designer Oleksandr Bilozub as well as the actor Les Serdiuk used the oeuvre of Samuel Beckett, one of the leading playwrights and writers of the 20th century, a Nobel Prize laureate from Ireland. The original translation of Krapp’s Last Tape was done by the young translator Tetiana Shlykhar (as is known, Beckett translated his French-language works into English and vice versa, ingeniously cutting out whole parts or adding some chapters, behaving in a quite creative way, virtually creating a new work), whereas the music solution to the play was offered by the pianist Ihor Mamushev.

The play’s only character, very old man Krapp (Les Serdiuk), spends his last days, listening to own monologues recorded on tape 15–30 years ago. The performance, a sort of dialogue between youth and old age, raises the topic of futility and vanity in life. By the way, this theatrical work uses voice recordings, which is the result of Beckett’s work on the radio. The London premiere of Krapp’s Last Tape took place in 1958. The English critic Al Alvarez saw in this work “a new stream in Beckett’s creative work, where the main topic is grief rather than depression.”

Serdiuk has managed to show human suffering through his character Krapp, who converses with his shadow (a recording of his voice), his past. It seems that the actor is living, not playing, on stage, while the audience have sincere sympathy for the protagonist: at 39 the hero was young, full of strength and hopes for happiness, but as years passed by Krapp got gradually exhausted by the blows of destiny, losses, diseases (his father and mother), and parting with his beloved woman. As he turns back, he sees that he has lived his life to the end and there is nothing he can change. The scanty set design includes a desk with two drawers, which serves as a box-house for the character, a tape recorder, and a lamp. Krapp is old, senile, dressed like a down-and-out. He lives in his own world, cutting himself off the reality with the help of a desk curtained off with a shabby coat.

The genre of the absurd is a rare guest on the Ukrainian stage, in particular in the Franko Theater. Most frequently, directors take up the play Waiting for Godot, which has brought world renown to Beckett, and after it was premiered critics called the playwright “the founder of the new esthetic stream, Absurdism, and his works turned contemporary man’s tragedy into his grandeur.”

Among the artistic successes, one can recall the 2006 staging of Waiting for Godot by the Les Kurbas Theater in Lviv (directed by Oleksii Kravchuk), which was a subtle psychological performance, whereas the Ivan Franko Theater has once addressed the Theater of the Absurd in 1984, staging Eugene Ionesco’s play Frenzy for Two or More. At the time, it was staged by V. Siechin (the main roles were played by Bohdan Stupka and Natalia Lototska), and now, 16 years later, the Franko Theater company has turned to one of Beckett’s plays.

Although Krapp’s Last Tape was written half a century ago, when you watch the one-man show, you understand that the play is not out of date, and the writer possessed the gift of foreknowledge, he was able to subtly show human psychology, and his oeuvre is an example of courage and firmness in showing the darkest and most sorrowful sides of human life. A critic said about Beckett, “He was able to look in Medusa Gorgon’s face, yet not turn into a stone.”

COMMENTARY

“If it is true classic, it will always remain relevant. What the playwright said in 1958 is fully in line with our realities,” director Oleksandr BILOZUB told The Day. “Beckett raises painful questions: How should we live? What is the sense [of life]? How can we avoid losing it? How can we find it? The list goes so on and on. Another questions include these: Who is right? Who is wrong?

“The repertoire of the Franko Theater in the 1980s included the performance Frenzy for Two or More after Eugene Ionesco (with brilliant actor’s work by Bohdan Stupka and Natalia Lototska). The play Krapp’s Last Tape will remain relevant in different times. One should not be afraid of classics! Who said that the Ukrainian stage should feature only realistic works?

“For me, addressing the oeuvre of one of the founders of the Theater of the Absurd (Ionescu and Beckett are regarded to be among them) became a very interesting period in life. Krapp’s Last Tape is a complicated work. It requires even more than careful reading – getting a thorough understanding of the play’s text in order to find a ‘key’ to staging. Offering Serdiuk to play this part, I undertook not only the director’s work, but also the set design of the play.

“We worked for two months and a half. I can call rehearsals with such a brilliant actor as Serdiuk a school of mastery. He can teach you not only on stage, but in life, too. Our performance does not appear very pessimistic and sad. Bit by bit, we brought the performance closer to realism. For the contemporary audience it is important that people shape themselves, their deeds and moral qualities. Young people can find a lot for themselves here, too, for example, the students who want to become actors. I think they must look at how one should play on stage (which is very convincingly done by Serdiuk).

“Our one-man show is made of contemplations, and the play requires the audience to let things they’ve seen and heard go through their hearts. Incidentally, an outstanding actress who performed Beckett’s roles, Billy Whitelaw, once said, ‘You don’t have to understand anything in Beckett’s works but what you see or feel. If you leave the theater without feeling anything, you will fail to understand.’

“This is where the matchless power of Beckett lies. His creative work constructs the feeling as something opposed to thought, the feeling of what it means to think as a living being, and be a living being. The fact that he managed to embody this with warmth, deep sorrow, eloquent silence and crashing sound, as well as blabbing humor proves his grandeur as a writer.”