For long periods of this play/film. Krapp (John Hurt) is saying nothing but his voice is heard nonetheless coming from the old reel-to-reel tapes that he plays back on his tape recorder. At times he seems incapable of remembering properly the events recounted by his younger voice on the tape, highlighting the relationship between memory and recording media.
Krapp at times takes pleasure and almost relives the memories on tape and at other times looses his temper as he disagrees with his former self or becomes impatient with the pace of his musings.
He sometimes seems surprised or extremely interested at the recordings but one is never sure whether his fascination is with a story that he no longer remembers or with his former telling of that story, which he might no longer see in the same way.
As a piece of theatre the contrast between live speech and recorded speech is more pronounced. On film it is a contrivance between the voice recorded on film and the voice recorded on tape recorded on film.
Great stuff none-the-less!
