Theater Review: 'Krapp's Last Tape' at Keegan Theatre

Brian Hemmingsen sure knows how to ogle a banana. In the Keegan Theatre's somewhat wobbly staging of the Samuel Beckett classic "Krapp's Last Tape," the stocky actor holds a couple of the yellow fruit at eye level, leering at them with expressions that are, by turns, rapt, tantalized, flirtatious and downright lustful.

The moments contribute to a tonal imbalance in director David Bryan Jackson's production, which overdoses on shtick before settling into a more satisfying mode of wistfulness.

Written in 1958, Beckett's single-character one-act depicts a disheveled 69-year-old writer (and banana lover) brooding over the diary entries he has recorded on tape over the years. A good portion of the play is wordless, as the title character putters about his den, searching through his recordings, and occasionally getting sidetracked by the need to pop into the next room for some booze. In the Keegan version -- presented under the aegis of the company's New Island Project, which specializes in minimalist renderings of Irish works -- the activity unfurls in a setting that's appropriately desolate. A black wall, punctured by a doorway so dark as to be almost invisible, looms behind a large desk, where Hemmingsen's Krapp is stoically sitting when the audience enters. (George Lucas is set designer; costumier Kelly Peacock contributes Krapp's funereal black outfit.)

The bleakness soon succumbs to Hemmingsen's hamming, not only in the banana gags but also in sequences in which -- his hands shaking conspicuously -- he searches through his tapes or examines incongruously sized keys on a mammoth key ring. Jackson also contributes some chuckle-milking: Exaggerated clanking and clattering sounds, reminiscent of a slapstick gag, inevitably accompany Krapp's offstage sorties. And when this Krapp looks up the word "viduity" (meaning widowhood) in the dictionary, he murmurs under his breath some other words on the page: "video jockey" and "video porn." A 1950s lexicon, this is not.

The overemphasis on the farce factor (Beckett was famously influenced by music-hall routines, and wrote a slip-on-a-banana-peel joke into this script) shortchanges the play's poetry and emotional pull. Still, an aching nostalgia does arrive in the latter half of this 70-minute production, as Krapp hunkers down over his tape recorder, reliving his mother's death and other fraught experiences. The bright, brash, confident voice on the recording contrasts strikingly with the raspy mutterings of the visible Krapp. Moreover, as he listens, Hemmingsen's demeanor becomes eloquently conflicted, seeming to radiate regret, sadness, wonder, empathy and, above all, bafflement at the strange phenomenon that is time.

The tableau is stirring enough that you wish you could hit the rewind button and start the play again, mixing in dashes of the belated poignancy throughout.

Krapp's Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett. Directed by David Bryan Jackson; lighting design, Dan Martin; sound design, Martin and Jackson. About 70 minutes. Through March 14 at Theatre on the Run, 3700 S. Four Mile Run Dr., Arlington. Call 703-892-0202 or visit http://www.keegantheatre.com.