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Wwhere is the time going? It’s been a year since Gary Oldman did it Krapp’s Ultimate Tape in York, returning him to the Royal Theater where at the age of 21 he played panto sleeping cat. Now, Samuel Beckett’s play has its own comeback. Oldman has brought the production – directed and produced by himself – to London’s Royal Court, where Krapp premiered it in 1958, with Patrick Magee. Court is where Oldman cut his teeth in the 80s. “It’s hard for me to understand, but forty years have passed,” he writes in the program.
His opinion is valid: Krapp’s Last Tape is a play for old people. Beckett was 52 years old when it was first prepared and Krapp is 69 years old. “He sighs a lot” as he walks around his cage, swaying in the years he painted 30 years earlier, in which he thinks about his character back, in the late 20s. But in the run of the Royal Court, Krapp is accompanied by young voices. The evening begins with a new short work by Leo Simpe-Asante, 19 years old, winner of the opening of the theater. Young Playwrights Award. It is an informative and generous program that shows great confidence in the newcomer, it should encourage other first-time playwrights and also maintain the aim of the theater to create new works and revive classics. It’s also a reminder that Krapp himself was originally an innovator – the big event in 1958 was Beckett’s Endgame.
Simpe-Asante subverts Beckett’s past with his play, Godot’s To-Do List, performed against the detritus of Krapp’s den. Waiting behind Godot is a country road and a tree; Simpe-Asante’s text mentions a stool and a covered plant, which here resembles a child’s dangerous wire game. The play, marked by similar metallic pings, informs us – finally! – for Godot, a boy who is trying to create the best things, who completes (other) a list of tasks that go from “doing splits” to “burning yourself” to “work through your relationship with your father”.
It’s a play on Beckett’s play – even the title subverts Estragon’s famous cry: “There’s nothing to do.” The magic of this young Godot is similar to Vladimir’s – they both hide carrots, write songs and shake their hats in the same way – and like Estragon, he has unfinished business (shades of Beckett’s comedy without the punchline) and ends up with his pants around his ankles.
In the part of Aneesha Srinivasan’s show, Shakeel Haakim is dressed as if he is being asked for a job – you see the top button being done very strongly, in a good physical performance that emphasizes the nervous discomfort of trying to connect. Is it about Godot himself, the sound in his head? Of course, Simpe-Asante awakens the inner critic through small decisions that stem from social anxiety and subvert existing fears.
At times the lyrics seem to refer to a world of authority but it’s hard to pin down – taking in the rich music of a fantasy program or even cheekily giving Godot a horn (the hat is awkwardly moved to cover the groin). The voices of the two actors blend together in a desperate scene, and the play reaches the same level with Rebecca Watson’s talent. A little bit dealing with the minutiae of the present alongside the long-term, unresolved turmoil. Unresolved into key words: Simpe-Asante considers with a laugh, yet does so with compassion, the idea that any of us can have any kind of authority in this world. It shows, sometimes really, a fruitless search for the place where you live.
The author is studying theater at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (one of his projects is a version of jukebox music for children at a music camp based on famous composers). He imitates Beckett’s dirty jokes and his songs while Godot tries limericks and riffs on the playwright’s name to create a character: “Beckett? Nah. Beck? Bick? Bock? Boq? Quock? Sam Quock? Sam Cock – no, no, not like that.”
Like Beckett, Simpe-Asante feels both empty and overwhelming at the same time, so it makes artistic sense – not just acting – to bring Godot’s only footstool and a little potted plant into Krapp’s place. The scene looks a lot, now, like the dark setting of Oldman’s Slough House HQ in Slow Horses. The gamer wearily climbs upstairs, glances at the pocket watch, stumbles and drops the first Krapp banana. In his speech on the show, Oldman reflects on his recent 68th birthday and how he can’t believe he’s just shy of Krapp’s age. Actors may feel the same way. As a teenager, Oldman was one of my favorite actors – enjoying Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue in True Romance, singing through the satanic crowd. Guns N’ Roses movie and leave that hair in Dracula. Her first magazine cover (and a love note to Tim Roth on his arm) was on my bedroom wall.
And here he is, back on stage with a gray beard, and he’s even closer than York Theater Royal. It’s a drama that always benefits from young actors but Oldman’s performance has grown, too, since I saw it last year. The right light is there, from the small smile that greets the release of the second banana to his confused laugh that greets the word “spool”, but there is anger, too, as he throws the contents of his desk on the floor, a flash of anger at (and from?) his past.
Krapp’s Last Tape is a rare challenge for the player. There is something about seeing it again, in the home of a new record, that reveals its experimentation. This is a drama set in the future that filters heavily from the past; a performance in which the star gave several interviews (audio recordings) before even stepping on stage; a conversation of some kind between one person at a different age.
Krapp criticizes himself, as does Godot’s Simpe-Asante. But Oldman considers himself an eternal child, even boasting that he recognizes the “ring of falsehood” in his own words: “With all this darkness around me I don’t feel alone,” he says, shuddering as he adds: “In a way.” Oldman’s face is that of a man who is surprised by the images he has seen in the past and what Beckett described makes time immovable: the funeral look of the “black black mill”, the dog’s hearing “a small ball, old, black, strong, strong, a woman with eyes that look like “chrysolite!” – the same look that the great Krapps showed people.
Little Godot is chased by his endless list; Krapp fills in the blank dates with tapes written in his old book. Godot assures us that he has a place to go; Krapp’s place can be as empty – almost as empty – as it was 30 years ago.
Oldman’s direction makes the night dark, with the dead time of Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design creating sinister paths. What Krapp remembers – this evening, at least – was about sleeping with a girl on a punt, their love was broken: “We lay there motionless. But the bottom of us all moved, and moved us.” The noise that hides the silence is the same as what Oldman said when the machine blows like water throwing water, and it chooses what is left of life when the tide goes out.
I don’t know if I could have watched the entire Endgame movie with Oldman’s hard work. This new combination works wonders but its three-week run sold out quickly. Can I say writing at the top of the Court’s to-do list? Write it now so Oldman could join the ranks of the great Krapps on camera.
