Krapp’s Last Tape is one of those formally groundbreaking, emotionally devastating Samuel Beckett plays that is nonetheless so locked into being staged roughly the same way every time – thanks to notoriously rigid Beckett estate – that it can be tricky to comment on a new production. Even if it is one that’s directed by, stars and is designed by Gary Oldman, his first stage performance since the mid-’80s.
Don’t panic: I will comment on it. But it is unfortunately a lot easier to pass judgement on Godot’s To-Do List, the new 20-minute minute short by 19-year-old Leo Simpe-Asante that is paired with Oldman's performance (a nod to the fact KLT itself debuted at the Royal Court in 1957 as a ‘curtain raiser’ for Beckett’s Endgame).
Godot’s To-Do List is a lively and irreverent response to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that also I’m afraid to say sucks. Nobody needs me to go off on a young writer at great length. But to be brief, the set up sees Godot (Shakeel Haakim) detained in a room where a disembodied voice demands he complete an interminable series of trivial tasks before he is allowed to go and meet his friends (anyone who knows Beckett’s Godot will be aware who they are). Yes, it just about works as a rejoinder thematically, although Aneesha Srivivasan’s production entirely ducks even a wry allusion to the fact Beckett’s Godot is clearly meant to be God. But structurally, tonally etc it has not a thing to say to Beckett, and is generally so far out of league of the main event that it’s hard to fathom any real reason for this pairing beyond ‘nice opportunity for a young person’. Which it is, and I think we all know the score here – nobody is saying ‘we’ve found the new Beckett’ – so let’s not dwell on it .
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a play before in which the lead actor is also the director and the designer. On the one hand it might simply be down to Oldman wanting to really emphasise his return to theatre after almost 40 years’ absence. On the other I wonder if doing more gives him a sense of greater ownership over Beckett’s genius but inflexible vision. He is, to be clear, bloody good in Krapp’s Last Tape. He emerges from an unseen stairwell, a frail, waistcoated figure surrounded by endless boxes of junk. Oldman’s Krapp is eccentric but not as clownish a figure as sometimes depicted: the famous business with (spoiler alert) his consumption of two bananas at the start is funny but also restrained and pitiful, an elderly man munching a snack contemplatively, savouring it because it seems he has so little else going on.
He is here to make a new tape, and to listen back to an old one. It seems he makes one recording annually to mark his birthdays, and to preserve his thoughts on the year gone by. Today is his sixty-ninth birthday; the tape he chiefly listens back to was made when he was 39. It’s a play about aging and regret: 39-year-old Krapp listens back to 29-year old Krapp and pours scorn on his younger self, with 69-year-old Krapp joining in derisively. But he himself is haunted by the 39-year-old’s words - quite alone, the old man dwells on an account of a relationship abandoned, apparently for a literary career that has come to naught.
It’s a fragile and unsettling depiction by Oldman, chased more with ethereal, wispy regret at old age and a life wasted than the sense of horror that suffused the performance of London’s last really big Krapp (sorry) Michael Gambon. Nonetheless, Oldman – director and actor – has made a truly unsettling choice for the play’s final moments. As the final words play back (‘perhaps my best years are gone, but I wouldn’t want them back, not with the fire in me now’) all humanity seems to leave him: he is drained of life, the last guttering dregs of his soul seemingly transferred to the recording, and he stares blankly into the darkness, the tape seemingly the end of his life. It’s a bold and profoundly unnerving final stroke and if you’re lucky enough to have to bagged a ticket to this largely sold out run – you can still get standing and Monday tickets – then a goofy lil’ warm up play is a small price to pay to see Oldman’s haunting return.
