Word: cherson
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...essentially that--sat in the dark--while the 69-year-old Krapp listened to his own voice on a tape. The audience listened to him listen to himself, replay himself, and tape his reactions to the replays. Mercifully, by skillful use of some impressive high-tech equipment, director Adam Cherson has somewhat embellished the purity of this experience. In this new version, Krapp (David Gullette) sits facing a hidden video monitor, and his reproduced image faces the audience while the actor keeps his back to us, intently watching his younger self (Lorcan O'Neill) on a larger video screen. Having...
...Cherson and company have done a good job of mechanical wizardry, enough to eliminate any reminder that this is an amateur production. Though the videotape and monitor comprise the central metaphor for the action, the machinery focuses observations on Krapp rather than drawing attention to itself. Through it, the themes of the piece gradually and firmly emerge...
...older Krapp apes the taped actions and words of his younger self, fantasizing each time Krapp the younger reminisces about a woman, and occasionally rousing himself to sing a song or swig from a wine bottle at the younger one's cue. In a device of mixed effectiveness, Cherson has chosen to splice actual slides of women into the fantasy sequence, which lends immediacy but punctures the script's hypnotic solipsism...
Apparently repentant at charging full price for a half-length evening, Cherson has tacked on after the performance one of Beckett's self-directed made-for-T.V. shorts, untitled Ghost Trio, it makes Krapp's Last Tape look like Oklahoma! by comparison. While hardcore absurdist buffs may find this collection of long, gray pauses and slow, expressionless voices interesting Ghost Trio acts primarily as a soporific and is assuredly not worth staying for. Better to walk out during the brief intermission between the shows, however gingerly, with the oppressive miasma of Krapp still fresh in your mind...
...Odessa and Cherson in the Ukraine, famine conditions became so aggravated last week that martial law was proclaimed and troops were ordered out to protect the state grain elevators from mobs of hungry workers...
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