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| Hume Cronyn. |
“KRAPP’S LAST TAPE” and “NOT I” A: Samuel Beckett; D: Alan Schneider; S: Douglas W. Schmidt; C: Sara Brook; L: John Gleason; P: Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center; T: Forum Theatre (OB); 11/22/72-12/17/72 (15) “Krapp’s Last Tape” [Dramatic Revival]; “Not I” [Sui Generis]
When Jules Irving left his post as artistic director of
Lincoln Center’s theatre program, after a bumpy tenure, he offered as his
last presentation a mini-festival of plays by Samuel Beckett as directed by
master Beckettian Alan Schneider. The final offering was this evening of two
one-acts starring the husband-and-wife team of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy,
although they did not appear on stage together in either piece.
The revival half of the program was the then already classic
one-man piece--first done in New York in 1960--about a 69-year-old man listening on his birthday to a
reel-to-reel tape recording he made when he was 39. The contrast between his
youthful enthusiasm and his aged decrepitude (hey, I’m 80 and far from
decrepit!) provides a shattering poignancy when well-played. And, with Cronyn
in the part, it was. John Simon called him “a magisterial Krapp, wisely
eschewing pathos.”
The highlight for many was the world premiere of “Not I,”
Beckett’s newest ultra-minimalist piece, in which a torrent of words pours
relentlessly and rapidly forth from a 70-year-old woman’s (Tandy) constantly
moving, disembodied, illuminated “Mouth,” revealing a lifetime of guiltily
pent-up experiences and emotions. Her only listener is a huge, hooded figure,
the Auditor (Henderson Forsythe), who merely acknowledges, like a confessor,
but never speaks a syllable.
The dense, 15-minute monologue gave Tandy a chance to expose
her considerable technical abilities. “Jessica Tandy . . . delivers the
monologue at breakneck speed, but with utter clarity and every nuance in place,
said a critic whose name has disappeared from my 40-year-old notes.
The play won an OBIE for Distinguished Foreign Play, Cronyn
got one for Distinguished Performance, and Tandy not only received one for
Outstanding Performance, but received a Drama Desk Award for her Outstanding
Performances both in “Not I” and “Happy Days.”
