Gary Oldman’s return to the stage for the first time for over thirty years sees him operate as almost a one-man band. He stars, directs, and designs the set for his month-long run in Krapp’s Last Tape. (He’d do his own production photography if he could, but that task falls to his wife).
Returning to York, where he made his professional debut, he tackles Samuel Beckett’s one act masterpiece, giving less than an hour of performance. With the right focus, we should be amused, moved, and treated to a masterclass of reflection.
Oldman has made some bold artistic choices, opting to fill the stage with the detritus of life, suggesting Krapp to be a hoarder. Before the play starts, “We Three” by The Ink Spots plays, with the rather pointed lyric, “My echo, my shadow, and me.” The song that Beckett suggested a snatch of, though, is absent.
He also excludes any comic business with banana skins and sets some of the action upstage (beware if you have seats near the front). He adds business with a hankerchief and affects something of a wispy pipe of a voice as Krapp, now, at 69.
The play is one of three Krapps, perhaps four. The old man listens to himself 30 years ago, reflecting on himself in his 20s, and the boy he was also gets a mention. Health, love, and the waste of a life are Beckett’s currency.
Every actor and director interprets this differently. In Oldman’s case, he is a blank canvas at times, a man who obsessively replays passages about a woman he once loved, but letting nothing past the mask he now wears.
I didn’t always believe he was this old man whose only pleasures are a tipple and a few bananas. With grey beard and straggly hair, peering closely at his ledgers, he assumed a desperate maturity but didn’t fully inhabit its depth.
The younger Krapp, on tape, caught the self-belief and pompousity of a man in middle age. A man who spent too much time chasing love and sinking into a woman’s eyes. An impatient and impetuous man. A man who failed in the here and now.
This is a rare chance to watch a celebrated screen actor live and close up, and I can definitely recommend for the moments where Oldman captures Krapp’s yearning old soul..
It’s notable that Oldman uses the same tape recorder that John Hurt and Michael Gambon used in their performances, suggesting a passing of the torch.
Beckett purists might be surprised, and this is certainly a Krapp focused on the dour and depressive. However, Oldman is more than capable of keeping the audience’s attention, and I hope he returns to the stage again soon.
4 stars.
Krapp’s Last Tape continues until 17 May at York Theatre Royal and is completely sold out.
Image credit: Gisele Schmidt