Krapp's Last Tape, Not I, That Time, & A Piece of Monologue

De: Samuel Beckett

Narrado por: Jim Norton, Juliet Stevenson, John Moffatt, Peter Marinker

These four works show Samuel Beckett at his most penetrating. Both Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Not I (1972) are among the most striking pieces written for the theatre in the 20th century. An old man sits at a table, playing back old tapes made when he was younger, mixed glimpses of past feelings. In Not I, we have just a mouth expressing memories and torment in a torrent of words.

That Time and A Piece of Monologue are less well-known, but express the Beckettian concerns of introspection, memory, and hopelessness in different ways, yet always with sympathy for the human condition. Though written for the stage, these four monodramas are even more penetrating in the enclosed, intimate medium of the audiobook.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©Beckett Estate (P)2005 Naxos Audiobooks

An incredible find

Four extraordinary actors take on these remarkable, brief and excruciatingly stark monologues by Samuel Beckett. Jim Norton is wonderfully funny as the old and deliciously engaging as the younger Krapp in 'Krapp's Last Tape'..Peter Marinker heartwrenchingly low key in 'A piece of monologue'. Juliet Stevenson painfully lost in the thought stream that is "Mouth". John Moffat pulls hard on the heart strings in "That Time". Great directors too in three cases and Peter Marinker self-directs impeccably. A glance at the futility of life and the insubstantial in our memories. And the rare beauty found in facing life's emptiness, again, & again...

The Power of Beckett’s Theatre

In Krapp’s Last Tape, we can feel the impact of his work in the way he uses pauses and silence to evoke our likely End, filled with the tension between reliving our remembered Life and denying or rejecting it.

Maybe by watching it unfold before us, we can avoid those moments. Or not.