Sunday, July 4, 2010

Box Three, Spool Five

Made it out to catch the final performance of Cutting Ball's revival of Krapp's Last Tape last night. As you probably know, this is a play about a man spending his 69th birthday sitting and listening to a tape made by him on his 39th birthday--and, on the tape, the younger Krapp talks about just having listened to a tape made when he was 27 or 29. It's a play about the follies and delusions of youth, the resignations of old age, the tug of nostalgia, the unpredictability of memory, the desire to re-capture the past, etc. etc.

So, can I just say that it is a really weird experience to see this play/production again, approximately one year after I saw it the first time... and especially because I am just a few days away from my own birthday?

It's kind of a mindtrip. But I feel that Beckett would approve.

5 comments:

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  2. Seems you had a nice Independence Day. Yesterday was my birthday, by the way. I was given as a present Still life by A.S. Byatt that was edited in spanish a couple of months ago. Happy birthday in advance.

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  3. Happy birthday to you! Hope you enjoy the Byatt.

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  4. Thank you, remember we exchanged comments about plays concerning plastic artists after the Tony award to Red? and here in the first pages of Still life we have the Alexander play The yellow chair about van Gogh and Gauguin. It seems a curious fact about the second half of the XX century, maybe we should write an essay at four hands.

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  5. There's a lot of stuff in Still Life about Van Gogh, as I recall. Not sure how well it fits with the rest of the novel, but you're right about the trend of plays about visual artists...

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