MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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WILL STONE foresees the refashioning of Beckett’s study of bitter nostalgia given the plethora of self-recording we make in the digital age
PRESCIENT: Stephen Rea in Krapp's Last Tape / Pic: Patricio Cassinoni
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JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
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Krapp's Last Tape
Barbican Theatre
★★★
PLAYWRIGHT Samuel Beckett’s semi-autobiographical one-acter has been performed by a whole load of old Krapps over the years — even though the legendary Irish actor Patrick Magee, who the play was written for, was a mere 36 when it was first staged in 1958.
The existentialist hour-long play ingeniously adopts the tape recorder as a device to explore themes of love, loss, loneliness, meaning, memory, mortality and regret.
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