BEND IT LIKE BECKETT
Play peers through lens of the past
Beckett has given us an opportunity to look at three periods of this person’s life and see that progression. LINDEN BANKS, actor
In Krapp's Last Tape, the title char-acter indulges in his annual ritual: looking back on his life while lis-tening to a recording made by his younger self. But even as the 69-year-old Krapp listens to and judges his 39-year-old self, so too do we hear the 39-year-old Kr app judging yet a younger version of himself. "He looks on his past self with disdain: 'Foolishness, foolishness, foolishness. If only I knew then what I know now," said Linden Banks, who plays the character in Samuel Beckett's one-man play. "And as the 69-year-old com-menting on the 39-year-old, he is in his extreme after-midnight mo-ments. But, in terms of the audi-ence perspective, it's an amazing trek, an amazing jowl-ley. Beckett has given us an opportunity to look at three periods of this person's life and see that progression." Krapp's Last Tape kicks off Sev-en Tyrants Theatre's new season. Seven Tyrants' David Thomas Newham is directing, as well as handling lighting and set design. One theme of the 1958 play is how priorities change during the course of a life. Or, as the anony-mous author of the Wiki entry "It's only with this great hind-sight we can access how that actu-ally panned out for us. In his case, none of these things really panned out for him." For Krapp, his most devastating decision was to "reject love and sacrifice that for his career and sense of self," Banks said. "Here he is at 69 having come to the realization that was the biggest mistake he ever made in his life. And he made it 30 years ago. And he's only coming to this realiza-tion. He's alone and very disgrun-tled with this decision and how it's affected him." To make the tape that the char-acter listens to, Banks had to put the 69-year-old version out of his mind. "Making the tape was almost like doing a separate play," said the ac-tor, who is 65. "Anything in the script pertain-ing to the life of that character has to be set aside. We went through the play to get the sense of its meaning and how we would in-terpret it, and then focused com-pletely on the life of the 39-year-old Krapp, and approaching it from that singular standpoint" The voice had to change, so he sounded younger. "The 39-year-old is more up-beat. Aside from the voice, the stance that he takes is a little more pompous and full of himself and he's quite self-assured and ada-mant about his decisions. That was a whole other aspect of the character that doesn't exist in the 69-year-old." Krapp's Last Tape is the first Beckett for Banks, whose credits include Seven Tyrants' Beggar's Opera and Jacob Marley's Christ-mas Carol (for which he was nomi-nated for a Jessie). It's also the first production of Seven Tyrants' first season at Ty-rant Studios, located in the Pent-ho