I am a Krapp collector. Since my late teens I’ve returned time and again to Samuel Beckett’s brief but monumental one-act play in which a purple-nosed, “wearish old man” spools through reels of memoir recorded each year on his birthday. Although performed by a single actor, Krapp’s Last Tape is not quite a monologue. It becomes a kind of dialogue between the 69-year-old Krapp and his recorded 39-year-old self, who in turn reflects on how he behaved in his late 20s.
It is, then, a tale of three Krapps. I’ve sailed past two of those ages: next stop, 69! Beckett’s play has endured partly because it bottles the nature of regret – it asks us all to consider what could have happened if we had made other choices in our lives, how things might have turned out differently. Two current productions – starring Gary Oldman at York Theatre Royal and Stephen Rea at the Barbican in London – not only invite audiences to consider such questions but also give the actors a rare opportunity to reconnect with their past.
