From An Abandoned Work - Productions

Productions

On first hearing a repeat of the BBC radio broadcast “Beckett was very impressed and moved by the cracked quality of Magee’s voice, but still indubitably Irish’ which seemed to capture a sense of deep world-weariness, sadness, ruination and regret … A few weeks later he began to compose a dramatic monologue”, especially for him. Called initially simply “Magee Monologue” it was originally conceived as “another radio play” and was again firmly rooted in events from his own life; what resulted was Krapp’s Last Tape.

In 1978, the play was produced at the Stratford Festival with actor Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey) in the lead role.

In 1980 the American actor-director Joe Chaikin expressed an interest in adapting the piece for the stage and sought advice from Beckett during a visit to Paris. Beckett was supportive and was happy to talk the matter over with him. This was not the first time this had been discussed though. In the mid-1960s Beckett suggested the following set-up to Shivaun O’Casey who wanted to present the work in a similar fashion to Play:

“Moonlight, ashcan a little left of centre. Enter man left, limping, with stick, shadowing in paint general lighting along. Advances to can, raises lid, pushes about inside with crook of stick, inspects and rejects (puts back in can) an unidentifiable refuse, fishes out finally tattered ms. Or copy of FAAW, reads along standing up ‘Up bright and early that day, I was young then, feeling awful, and out–’ and a little further in silence, lowers text, stands motionless, finally closes ashcan, sits down on it, hooks stick round neck, and reads text through from beginning, i.e. including what has been read standing. Finishes, sits a moment motionless, gets up, replaces text in ashcan and limps off right. Breathes with maximum authenticity, only effect to be sought in slight hesitation now and then in places where most effective, due to strangeness of text and imperfect light and state of ms.”