Seven Tyrants Theatre, opens its first season of work in their new performance venue with Samuel Beckett’s absurdist one-man masterpiece: Krapp’s Last Tape. Opening October 5th, the Jessie Award winning independent theatre company’s production stars Jessie Award nominated actor Linden Banks as “Krapp,” and is directed by David Thomas Newham.
Rarely produced professionally in Vancouver, Krapp’s Last Tape is a portrait of an aging artist who has given up on the possibility of love in exchange for a life of fruitless artistic expression. The Off-Broadway sensation, a tour-de-force for one man, is the most affectionate portrait of a character that Beckett has ever written: an aging man who lives a lonely and shabby existence in a darkened room. At year’s end, he takes out a bottle of wine, a banana and his tape recorder, and he listens as his own voice from the past recounts the glories and hopes of his youth.
Director Newham also provides the lighting and set designs, with Jessie award winning Daniel Deorksen on sound design. Newham and Deorksen have collaborated on a number of notable productions over the years and, although this is the first time they have produced one of Samuel Beckett’s works, their previous efforts have been compared to the master of minimalism.
The play runs October 5th to 26th at Tyrant Studios, the company’s performance venue located above the historic Penthouse Nightclub. Recently converted by the company to a studio theatre, the upstairs rooms once hosted exclusive parties and performances by music legends such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr, and Frank Sinatra.
Krapp’s Last Tape plays Tuesdays through Fridays at 8pm / Saturdays at 4pm / Sundays at 7pm / dark Mondays. Tickets are available online at seventyrants.com