Krapp's Last Tape

(La dernière bande)

Samuel Beckett - 1958

The dramatic situation is even further reduced; here the "dialogue" is between an aged, dehumanised man and a tape recorder that plays back impressions he recorded thirty years before. As he laughs or responds in anger to his youthful idealism, we realise with horror that the past was only the present in embryo and that his life has been an inescapable progression toward the animal state, stripped of mind and hope. The physical appetites remain, but the faculties have degenerated and the intellect can only respond with joy to the sound of the word "spool," a sound whose fascination was already obvious on a tape made long ago.