The Last Tape was Krapp

The Triskel Arts Centre were showing Beckett's only piece for cinema, 'Film', and two pieces for television, 'Quads 1 + 2'. I had seen 'Film' before and, despite 'starring' Buster Keaton and featuring some animal slapstick, knew that I was not in for a barrel of laughs. Blame it on my masochistic streak. Anyhow getting there early I got to watch half of it once. Then they started it for the main screening. The movie is in glorious silence, so I was well able to hear the slobbering of some idiot chewing gum or something behind. Three minutes before the end the screen went blank. Of course, had I not seen it before, I might have thought this was Beckett's ending, but it wasn't. The lights went up and the phantom gum chewer was revealed as a cute French girl. She was French; I hear her speak. Sometimes the stereotypes are true. Unable to fix the screening, they put on the next two pieces. Four guys walking around a square. Again. And again. And then in the last piece, again, only without colour or music. Beckett is cool! Though let me qualify that with the words of Wayne and Garth: 'NOT!'. Well, sometimes I grant you, he is. I love 'Waiting for Godot' and 'Krapp's Last Tape' works too, but sometimes performance art, as his later stuff seems to have become, just doesn't fill the bill. Still I am not going to say it in a public theatre, certainly not in a silent public theatre. Unfortunately when they got around to playing 'Film' again, all of it, some old fart behind decided to do just that. All through an already painful screening, we were treated to this fool, who really was old enough to know better, not only rubbishing Beckett, but showing he had not the slightest grasp of what it was about anyway. (For those of you interested, it's all mixed up with the existential dichotomy between the subject and the object, and how to be seen, or, in this case, filmed, objectifies the person, depriving them of a real living existence. There I said it.) I'd say the old fart was Krapp in the flesh, only Krapp showed a little more awareness of what preoccupied Beckett. Thankfully it was all over in under an hour. I just came online to find the location of a pub, now I'm going for a Murphy's. Well, when in Cork...!