Krapp’s Last Tape – York Theatre Royal

Writer: Samuel Beckett

Director: Gary Oldman

If Gary Oldman wants to spend three minutes eating a banana on stage, then the audience is absolutely here for it. In fact, you could hear a pin drop as he silently, deliberately consumed not one, but threebananas. In another actor’s hands, this could feel indulgent or glacial. In Oldman’s, it’s a masterclass in control – a moment both absurd and painfully human. Your reviewer will never look at a banana in the same way again.

Beckett is famously like marmite – some find the minimalist existentialism deeply moving, others cold and impenetrable. But Oldman somehow cuts through all that. In this 55-minute solo performance, every gesture and breath seems carved from a career spent studying the human condition. Yes, the play is sparse, almost empty seeming, yes, it is just nine pages long – but in that brevity, Oldman finds expanses.

We find Krapp at 69, slowly ascending to his attic, piled high with the detritus of a life half-lived. As he rummages through biscuit tins to find “Box three, spool five” – a tape recorded on his 39th birthday – Oldman lets us in. It’s subtle: a twitch, a pause, a sigh.

There’s something almost sacred about how Krapp listens to the tape – to himself, 30 years younger – 90% of acting may be reacting, and this is a reacting masterclass from Oldman. Krapp listens with a bitter grin, cringing at youthful confidence and the missteps that followed. It’s in the quiet moments—those lingering silences—where the real story unfolds: time slipping away, regret settling in like dust, and memories flickering like dying light.

The set, meticulously designed, reinforces the weight of that memory – an attic packed with the kind of knick-knacks and nothings that only mean something to the person who kept them. And the final spotlight, not on Krapp’s face but on the Bakelite reel-to-reel player, is a beautifully restrained touch. It’s not about the man, in the end – it’s about the moments he couldn’t hold onto.

Oldman now joins a lineage of greats – Gambon, Hurt, Pinter – who’ve stepped into Krapp’s shoes. But he brings his own distinct fragility, a kind of cracked grandeur. In a role where there’s “very little to do,” Oldman does a lot. This is a Samuel Beckett dream play for actors of a certain age – and, in Oldman’s hands, a haunting, hypnotic gift to the audience – to love or be bewildered by, it’s a choice he leaves them with.

Runs until 17th May 2025