John Hurt, the superb British actor, gave an entertaining and enlightening interview this week on the “Charlie Rose Show.” Hurt is currently appearing in Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. For a taste of his performance see this 90-second New York Times video. The Times review was a rave.
This production comes from Britain’s Gate Theater and is directed by Michael Colgan. Hard to believe but this is Hurt’s debut on a New York stage. He also stars in a movie just coming out, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Hurt is one of those actors whose face has only become more expressive with age, a transformation strikingly evident in a medley of film clips with which Rose begins the program. It’s also uncanny how similar to Beckett’s stern, craggy visage Hurt’s has become.
The 1958 one-character one-act is a prominent piece in the Beckett canon. On the occasion of his sixty-ninth birthday Krapp listens – with regret, remorse and anguish – to a tape recording he made 30 years earlier. Krapp has chosen to live for his art, without love, “a fatal mistake” Hurt says. The actor doesn’t believe that art and love are mutually exclusive but they were for Krapp and, Hurt suspects, “for Beckett also, at least at times.” “That’s not a great choice,” Hurt says the play is telling us.
From the stage every night Hurt finds that the wonderful writing of Krapp’s Last Tape forges a magical connection between performer and audience. Asked how he decides what scripts to perform, Hurt says he needs two things. “One, I need to make sure I can do what [the script] is intended to do. The film must have a chance to succeed on the level it’s intended to succeed.” The second is that “I can make [the role] personal for me. But the first one is more important.”
For writers Hurt offers this admonition: “The most difficult roles to perform are the worst written. It’s like asking a jockey to win a race on a donkey.” This, in my experience, is almost always true despite the great temptation for writers to dodge responsibility and blame script problems on the direction or acting.
Krapp’s Last Tape and Beckett take up the first 18 minutes of Rose’s 40-minute program. After that the interview loses steam but there are nuggets throughout about the actor’s craft. Hurt’s mimicking of Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier is worth the price of admission. If you watch to the end, Hurt will reward you with a charming rendition of the Jabberwocky poem from Alice in Wonderland.
Krapp’s Last Tape closes this weekend. If I were in New York, I would find a way to be in the audience.
