You could view Krapp’s Last Tape as a star vehicle for the serious actor. At just 50 minutes long and with little live dialogue, it requires reaction over action as Krapp, on his 69th birthday, listens to tapes of his younger self before sitting down to make his annual recording, reflecting on the year’s events.
Gary Oldman is a serious actor, and there is a palpable sense of excitement ahead of his first stage performance in 37 years here in the York Theatre Royal where he started his acting career. A buzz in the foyer transforms into hushed suspense in the auditorium. You suspect there are two circles of audience members with different reasons for their anticipation – the Venn diagram only slightly overlapping.
For the first, there is the prospect of seeing Oldman follow in the footsteps of stage greats like Patrick Magee, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon and John Hurt in performing Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece – their ears will prick when they hear that Oldman uses the same reel-to-reel tape recorder as Gambon and Hurt.
The second is here to see the star of the hit show Slow Horses, Commissioner James “Jim” Gordon from the Dark Knight Trilogy, Sirius Black from the Harry Potter films or whichever of Oldman’s Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning performances are their favourite. Krapp’s cluttered room – a hoarder’s dream piled high with books, archive boxes, and battered suitcases – could be Jackson Lamb’s in Slough House.
It’s smartly designed by Oldman, who has three roles tonight – actor, director and designer. The York Theatre Royal’s auditorium is a mammoth space for a play that relies on an audience being able to pick up the subtleties of the actor’s performance, and Oldman uses the staging to push Krapp right upstage so that it almost feels like we are surrounding him – but it isn’t enough to combat the feeling that the space is just too vast for the play.
At the Gate Theatre in Dublin – half the capacity of York’s 750 seats – I watched the lines on Hurt’s face melt as Krapp shrank in front of me, his fire long extinguished, listening to his younger self speak with conviction of “the fire in me now.” In London’s 70-seater Jermyn Street Theatre, I felt like a voyeur as James Hayes’s Krapp cradled his tape recorder. Here, these moments dissipate in the space between Oldman and the Dress Circle.
That Krapp feels at arm’s length is indicative of a performance that feels light. After almost four decades in television and film, Oldman seems to struggle with projection. Conceivably, Oldman’s intention could be to convey Krapp’s age and declining health – after all, we could interpret Beckett’s title as suggesting this is Krapp’s final tape or ‘last’ as in simply his most recent – but that isn’t the effect.
Instead, I strain to catch snatches of dialogue. The obvious question is whether Oldman has bitten off more than he can chew by directing himself in his return to the stage and whether a director would have helped iron out the kinks – I’m inclined to say yes to both counts.
That is not to say that Oldman is poor. He resists the opportunity to overact as he holds the silence, allowing moments to hang in the air. His consumption of bananas finds the right level of comedy and he has somehow convinced the usually rigid Beckett Estate to allow him to deviate from the playwright’s stringent stage directions for the play’s opening.
His recording of the 39-year-old Krapp, taped a couple of months before arriving in York, is particularly poignant with the performance seeming to shift under us as the older Krapp’s mood changes. That’s why Oldman’s on-stage performance is underwhelming – you know what he is capable of.
The play itself remains a masterpiece of content and style, meticulously plotted to its devastating end. Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting draws us closer to Krapp in the closing moments as the darkness closes in around Krapp, the spotlight fading until he too is engulfed by shadows and our attention becomes fixed on the red light of the reel-to-reel tape recorder burning in the darkness as the tape runs on in silence.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (Good)
Krapp’s Last Tape is at York Theatre Royal until 17 May 2025
