Krapp’s Last Tape, Happy Days, Endgame

On opening night the show that seemed destined for humorless disaster was Clove Productions’ Krapp’s Last Tape, the elegant 1958 one-act in which the decrepit Krapp listens with unmitigated disdain to tapes he recorded of himself 30 years earlier. It started 45 minutes late, and performer Michael Martin spent much of that time nervously running–and bungling–his lines in the lobby. But by the time he finally appeared onstage, his mane of gray hair as disheveled as his ill-fitting black trousers and vest, his incongruous white shoes polished to a Sunday-school gleam, he’d mastered this heartbreaking buffoon. Shuffling stiffly to an enormous desk covered with an ancient reel-to-reel tape deck and a dozen battered boxes of tape spools, he lowered himself into a chair with arthritic care, placed his hands neatly before him, and let out a tiny sigh, which left him as limp as a deflated balloon.

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »

where Prop Thtr, 3502-4 N. Elston

WHEN Through 10/15: Sun 3 PM

Endgame