One of the most famous performances of Waiting for Godot was at Saint Quentin’s prison. The inmates identified with the play as if they were in it. I felt a bit like this during Krapp’s Last Tape. An old man is playing through spools of taped recordings he has made of his life denouncing his younger self as a ‘fool’, or is the older man a fool? I feel very much the same when I flick through photographs of my younger self. Did I know less then or more?
At the centre of the stage is Gary Oldman, who also directs the play. Rewinding, playing, fast forwarding, pausing, chortling but always mesmerising. We watch him listening transfixed by his endless stare into nothingness.
Trapp’s Last Tape is the second part of two short plays performed (with a short pause in between) at the Royal Court. In 1958, it was the curtain raiser at the same theatre, now this role has been taken by Godot’s To-Do List, a play by Leo Simpe-Asante, winner of the Royal Court Young Playwrights Award. History repeating itself much like in Beckett’s play.
Godot’s To-Do List
In Godot’s To-Do List, Godot is trapped on stage, given instructions by a mechanical voice. When he completes a task, he is given another one. The to-do-list seems endless. At times he pleads with the voice to stop, to give him the last instruction, at other times he tries to swap places with members of the audience. The futility of all such actions is simultaneously painful, comic and inevitable.
Shakeel Haakim as Godot, varies from defiance to anger to compliance. Demonstrating both intense vulnerability and misplaced confidence in equal doses. Having spent the morning trying to get an Amazon call-centre to fix a seemingly simple problem for me, I could understand his frustration. At the end like him my response was one of hopeless compliance.
Waiting is something that Godot is familiar with after all.
Krapp’s Last Tape
Many in the audience were simply waiting for the arrival of the main act: Gary Oldman performing in the intimate surroundings of the Royal Court. Some even missed the curtain-raiser, which is a shame, for if anything Leo Simpe-Asante’s play is more pertinent to current times than Beckett’s.
Krapp’s Last Tape is not an easy play to watch. But who said theatre had to be easy. Oldman listens and stares into oblivion as much an observer of the play as is the audience. His interest is piqued at references to past sexual conquests but apart from that he listens vacantly.
As is the norm for Beckett, there is a grotesqueness to his appearance that reinforces the absurdity of his situation. Oldman’s comic timing is perfection, bringing much needed relief to the oppressiveness of the play.
We are left in no uncertainty that the following day Krapp will play his last tape again, much as the audience will once more come to watch. The loop is unbroken.
Oldman’s performance is beautifully understated and sympathetic, at the end of which he takes a bow almost apologetically, a master of his work.
Krapp’s Last Tape / Godot’s To Do List
Krapp’s Last Tape / Godot’s To Do List plays the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs until 30 May. All performances are sold out but you might be able to get a return.
