News

Hughie

• Written by Eugene O'Neill
• Directed by Robert Falls
• Starring Brian Dennehy and Joe Grifasi
• ** 1/2

Krapp's Last Tape

• Written by Samuel Beckett
• Directed by Jennifer Tarver
• Starring Brian Dennehy
• ****

There's nothing quite as satisfying as returning to a show to find the artistry has developed and deepened over time.

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival's small-scale studio production of Samuel Beckett's one-man show Krapp's Last Tape – starring American stage star Brian Dennehy under the direction of Canadian Jennifer Tarver – was a highlight of the festival’s 2008 season.

A version reconfigured for a traditional proscenium theatre opened at Chicago's Goodman Theatre last night (staged with original Canadian costume and lighting designers Patrick Clark and Robert Thomso), and it has expanded in every sense of the word.

Two-time Tony winner Dennehy returns as Krapp, a failed author who has a tradition of recording an audio diary on his reel-to-reel every year on his birthday. On the occasion of his 69th, Krapp, celebrating by slowly drinking himself into a solo stupor in a shabby suit, reminisces and regrets as he listens to an entry from when he was 39.

Dennehy has relaxed into the role and now seems less afraid to clown around as Krapp, aging back into infancy, fiddles with a banana peel and revels in the word "spool."

Tarver, whose precise direction can border on the hermetic, also seems to have taken a deep breath with the material. The result is a production that is much roomier and funnier than it was at Stratford, and more shatteringly human.

As Krapp listens to his younger self's overly enunciated ramblings about a spiritual epiphany, Dennehy's face recoils in disgust and he slaps the fast-forward switch. But when he hears the younger man speaking about "a girl in a shabby green coat on a railway-station platform," his face drops and, under his unwieldy white eyebrows, his eyes go black and watery like two barrels of oil. We hear no details about this woman, but we can tell from this mournful look that losing her left Krapp with an aching space where the recorded words are now echoing painfully.

Krapp's Last Tape is Beckett's most accessible play, and it’s entirely prescient about the effect of recording technologies on memory; anyone who has ever, against his or her better judgment, perused photos of an old flame on Facebook will recognize the emotion that washes over Krapp as he listens to his younger self blithely throw away love. This play puts the lie to the expression that time heals all wounds; in matters of the heart, at least, time wounds all heels. Dennehy's intimate performance is magnificently moving, and I was brought to the brink of tears several times.

As at Stratford, Irish playwright Beckett's miniature masterpiece is paired with another 1958 one-act, a minor piece by Irish-American playwright Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Dennehy's longtime collaborator, Goodman artistic director Robert Falls, Hughie is a character study of a small-time New York gambler named Erie. He's returning to his shabby hotel room after an epic bender precipitated by the death of his friend Hughie, who was the night clerk at the hotel.

Erie finds Hughie's replacement – played by the droopy, droll Joe Grifasi – behind the front desk and tries to win him over. As it turns out, Erie's confidence largely came from Hughie's admiration of his exaggerated exploits. In Hughie's absence, Erie only sees the stark reality of his lonely life.

Hughie has also improved since Stratford. There's now more of an obvious arc: We see what is at stake here: Erie's sense of self. But though Dennehy communicates the importance of this late-night interaction by gripping the concierge's counter as if he's holding on for dear life, the meandering monologue – which premiered only after O'Neill's death – still feels a little too much like actually listening to a drunk who just won't go to bed. The material, with its cheerful cop-out ending, pales next to Krapp's.

The double-bill is, as they say, Broadway-bound, but specific dates have yet to be announced – and the transfer will depend, at least a bit, on the critical reaction in Chicago.

At the Goodman Theatre in Chicago until Feb. 28.