KRAPP’S LAST TAPE | THEATRE ROYAL, YORK
★★★★
‘… a melancholic performance that endears and transfixes‘
With just a smattering of lines, mumbled reactions and the odd exclamation punctuating a fleeting 50 minute period, Krapp’s Last Tape could be better described as an exercise in acting more than a play in the traditional sense, especially when the actor centre-stage is the Oscar winning Gary Oldman. Make no mistake, many, if not the majority, gathered at York’s Theatre Royal are here to see the star of Slow Horses, not Samuel Beckett’s one-man study of regret.
That said, the secret of all great acting is indeed the ability to react, something at which, over a 46 year career, Oldman has become more than adept. That career started on the stage of the Theatre Royal in 1979, where he made his professional debut and appears relaxed on his return.
Krapp’s Last Tape, Oldman’s first stage role since 1987, finds him shouldering the responsibility of holding the audience’s attention alone. Surrounded by a clutter of boxes, artefacts and bric a brac, his Krapp, lost in the memories evoked by a recording made 30 years previous is a cantankerous, angry and strangely gentle man.
At the heart of this Steptoe’s grotto, designed by Oldman himself – he also directs – the actor sits in silence, eating bananas when not staring accusingly at the inanimate objects inhabiting the desktop before him. The minutes tick away before he utters his first words – the audience waits in absolute silence. Rapt.
Each year, on his birthday, Krapp records a new tape reflecting on the year gone by. We meet him on his 69th birthday. Now a lonely man, he is ready with a bottle of wine, some bananas and his reel-to-reel tape recorder. Listening back to a recording he made as a young man, he reflects inwardly on the hopes and dreams of his younger self as he wonders what to say this time.
Choosing from spools of past birthdays, lit only by Malcolm Rippeth’s effectively simple lighting design, Oldman proves a master of props, threading the reel to reel tape recorder with practised ease. As his recorded voice charts his conquests three decades earlier, Oldman’s face is a picture of emotion, frustration and occasionally surprise.
It’s a portrayal that is mesmerising. He presents a man brow-beaten by time, robbed of his earlier confidence and conscious of the inconsequentiality of life. It’s a melancholic turn that transports and transfixes to the extent that he appears to be taking his curtain call almost before it has begun. The 50 minutes flies.
A fascinating piece of theatre then, each second a study of being, albeit that of the actor rather the character – Oldman’s choices as the piece unfolds prove a masterclass in stagecraft and leave most of his fans satisfied, if a bit bemused by the piece itself, judging by the comments as they filter from the auditorium.
But then, it’s Oldman’s star power and the opportunity to see him back on stage that makes this Krapp’s Last Tape a landmark production. As Krapp himself might say, ‘Let’s leave it at that’.
Runs until 17 May, tickets here.
