Past Performances

Just to keep consistent, here are all the shows I've seen recently.

Faust - Same performance as previously mentioned, but I got to see the second act this time. Sadly, I actually liked the first act better anyway. The second act followed the Faust legend even more loosely than the first and was a little too hectic for my taste. Overall though I really enjoyed the show with it's net-based acrobatics and intense energy. I'd suggest seeing anything by this up-and-coming Icelandic group, Vesturport.

Krapp's Last Tape - I did a full review of this one for class, so here that is.

A study of a man’s entire life is a hard thing to do in fifty minutes, but Michael Gambon, and further Samuel Beckett, the author of Krapp’s Last Tape, do it about as well as it can be done. It’s a very particular type of play you walk into when you see this, and it’s important to be aware of that. It shouldn’t be placed next to West End musicals and be called boring, because on that scale, then yes, it probably is. But, if you take it for what it is, a snippet, a rare glimpse, at a man at his end, then you can begin to see this play for what it’s meant to be.

There’s no denying the first few absolutely silent minutes were a bit painful. Michael Gambon sat motionless while people in the audience coughed and squeaked in their chairs. It seemed more like a social experiment; see what a crowd will do if the show just never started. But, start it did, eventually. Krapp’s Last Tape examines a man as he looks back on his life through many years of tape recordings of himself. And Gambon was the essence of everything Beckett had written, a man falling apart at the seams literally and figuratively. His attire, his face, his walk, this was a man who’d let himself go. At the same time, the written actions and those contributed by Gambon were those of a man who seemed severely afflicted with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Once this thought creeps into the mind, it’s hard to ignore. His repetitive walking, his tapping of the desk, his inability to control his banana-eating, years and years of precisely catalogued tape recordings of his life - one couldn’t help but see a man trapped in his behavior, and longing to break free to find deeper meaning.

While Gambon fulfilled the requirements of the role, the audience wasn’t left with the sense of a complete journey by the end. There was no moment of understanding, when one could see this man plainly. Whether this is because of some shortcoming in Gambon’s acting or because Beckett didn’t want the audience to know the whole story is unclear. But even if one couldn’t fully comprehend Krapp by the end, it was still easy to see some of the other messages laid out clearly. When you’re at the end and the dearest thing you have is a memory of a girl one afternoon, what does that mean life is really about? These types of questions are probably what this play is supposed to inspire, and it does. But, it doesn’t rock you to your core the way perhaps it should. One is left intrigued, but not moved.

Spending a long time on the content is very necessary with this show, as everything else is rather sparse. The set consisted of a desk, disheveled, and matching the description Beckett so carefully left. The lighting is stark, one shining directly down on Gambon and two others that created “other rooms” offstage. The sound was Gambon, or rather younger Krapp, speaking, perfectly timed on previously recorded tapes. Because of this minimalism, you were forced to analyze every moment Gambon spent on stage. The play requires you to think about not only what you are seeing and hearing, but also what you are supposed to get out of Gambon’s interpretation of Beckett’s Krapp. That was a lot to ask, and I am not sure anyone who left the theater really had a good answer to that question.

Enlightenment - A play about a boy who goes missing and the trying emotional time his family goes through in dealing with this. It's marketed as a psychological thriller which does not come across at all in the first act, but can definitely be seen in the second when a different boy shows up who believes he's their son. I thought the characters were quite well done, but the show wasn't very cohesive. It felt as if it was trying to say too much about too many big topics all through this one family.

Philharmonia - I saw a concert of Sibelius, Grieg, and Rachmaninov conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. I feel like I can't really critique this properly because I haven't been to many classical concerts. The music was lovely and moving, but I definitely found my mind wandering at parts. The most enjoyable segment of the evening was during the Grieg when Nikolai Lugansky did things on the piano I didn't know were possible.