16-20 June 1999, University Theatre, The Arts Centre
1958: Elvis went into the army. Miles Davis cut a record with Gil Evans. Johnny Devlin came to Christchurch. Elric Hooper played the Fool in Ngaio Marsh's King Lear. And Samuel Beckett wrote Krapp's Last Tape, a comic-tragic play in which a man at the end of his life, and the end of the millennium, attempts to rekindle his remembered youth by electronic means. But where is his memory to be found? In the remnants of his voice, recorded years ago? In his present image, a photograph, a video? In his body, when he sleeps, dreams, eats a banana? The fifties held such promise. The dream of consumerist prosperity and personal fulfilment - the overriding fantasy of Western Civilisation - was effervescent. It was warm in the fifities. Now, with technology making almost anything possible, the dream has grown cold. When did he lose hope? When did we?
A complete recording of this production exists in Free Theatre's archives.

Krapp's Last Tape followed Alan Brunton's direction of Love on a Bicycle (1998) and Comrade Savage (1998) for Free Theatre. Alan Brunton also assisted Free Theatre on the project The Last Days of Mankind (2000).

Research

Haydn Kerr, used Krapp's Last Tape as material for his MA research Clowning in the Avant-garde: Antonin Artaud's The Philosopher's Stone and Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, University of Canterbury, 2008

Publicity

Krapp's Last Tape
Free Theatre Press Release

Brunton is 'perfect Krapp'
Anna Dunbar, The Press, 15 June 1999

Philosophy on stage
The Mail, 15 June 1999

Krapp's Last Tape
CANTA, 16 June 1999

Red Mole features in Beckett play
Chronicle, June 1999

Former Red Mole is 1999 writer-in-residence
Chronicle, June 1999

Reviews

That one certainty in life, bequeathed to us by the philosopher Decartes, is eroded as the light fades and the tape runs off the spool, an end which was a superbly dramatic moment, supremely crafted by the director. Alan Brunton, as Krapp, does a remarkably good job.

Beckett play by Free Theatre
Alan Scott, The Press, 21 June 1999
After replaying the lyrical and unforgettable description of lovers lying in a moving punt, old Krapp heard his younger self brashly declare that he wouldn't want his best years back. Brunton stared motionlessly into blackness as the tape hissed to its end, the lights came down in the slowest fade possible and the audience sat in as close to perfect stillness as you'll get in this hyperactive age, with the after-image of Krapp's staring eyes printed indelibly on their own retinas. The spare elegance of the writing, Beckett's searing vision and Brunton's focused intensity combined here to make compelling and bleak theatre.

Krapp's Last Tape
Elizabeth O'Connor, Theatre News, Aug 1999