Krapp's Last Tape/Footfalls, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow

Dance critic

Monday 4 June 2012

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Mary Brennan

On the page, Footfalls is 1000 words at most. On-stage, in this tellingly orchestrated production, Beckett's text lengthens into a haunting meditation on the passing of time, and the way in which life – conditioned by our habits, our fears, our relationships – narrows into loneliness, as we wait for death to end it all.

That such brooding darkness can offer a poetic beauty is well understood by director Dominic Hill and by his cast of two: Kathryn Howden as May, the middle-aged daughter who is carer to Kay Gallie's (unseen) invalid mother. Howden's heels click rhythmically, like a death-watch beetle, as she paces within the ribbon-strip of light on the sombre stage. Her very clothes sigh as she moves. Her occasional voice holds on to the timbre of fading youth while, off-stage, Gallie's wanly sepulchral tones speak of her own imminent end – the regrets, the memories, the weariness, at once an echo and a future projection, of May's dwindling towards mortality.Krapp's Last Tape – the first part of this utterly compelling double bill – has Gerard Murphy, pictured, in harrowing form as the solitary old growler driven to reconnect – by way of his audio diaries – with a younger self whose (taped) voice is his own, yet no longer his own. It's cocky with a self-belief that Krapp, 30 years on, snickeringly derides: the aspirational fire has crashed and burned. And yet, as he lumbers into the darkness for another gulp of booze, this rumpled saggy ancient still feels the need to assert his existence on what might be his last tape. Lizzie Powell's lighting lends limitless glooms to these profound shadowlands of the soul.

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Krapp's Last Tape/Footfalls, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow

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