Some pieces of theatre entertain you for an evening. Others stay with you long after you have left the theatre. Krapp’s Last Tape is very much the latter.
Performed at The Cockpit Theatre and directed by its own Artistic Director, Dave Wybrow, this is a beautifully intimate and deeply moving production. At its heart is Krapp, an ageing man confronting recordings of his younger self, and through them, fragments of a life that increasingly feels both familiar and unreachable.
There is something profoundly poignant about hearing the voice of a younger man while watching his older self grapple with memory, identity and the passage of time. The tapes become far more than recordings, they are a tangible connection to another version of Krapp a man with different ambitions, desires, disappointments and certainties.
Peter Marinker gives a remarkable performance. He brings humour, frustration, vulnerability and humanity to Krapp, never allowing him to become simply a figure of sadness. There is an almost uncomfortable honesty to the character, he can be irritable, self-absorbed and at times wonderfully funny, yet beneath all of that is a profound sense of loss. Perhaps that sense of loss has greater personal meaning for Marinker who received an Alzheimers diagnosis two years ago. In Krapp’s Last Tape, Beckett’s one-act monologue written in 1958. We meet a man marking his birthday alone, while listening to and reflecting on recordings he made each year on that day, as he makes what we are told his last tape.
It is the contrast between the man we hear on the tapes and the man we see before us that makes the performance so affecting. The younger Krapp seems so certain of himself, while the older man is increasingly disconnected from the memories that once formed his identity. That raises one of the most powerful questions at the centre of the production, how much of who we are is held within our memories?
Dave Wybrow’s direction understands the extraordinary restraint required by a piece such as this. There is no need for theatrical excess. Instead, the production allows silence, pauses, movement and the smallest details of performance to carry the emotional weight. The intimacy of The Cockpit feels particularly suited to the piece, creating a sense that we are witnessing something intensely private rather than simply watching a character on a stage.
There is also a real sense of collaboration behind the performance. A particular mention must go to stage manager Marta Fossati, who worked incredibly closely with Marinker. In a production so dependent upon precise timing, cues, repetition and an almost instinctive relationship between actor and stage, that collaboration is fundamental. I was memorised at times by the delicacy of when needed, the live in-ear prompts where it felt Marinker and Fossati worked as a perfect team, a merry dance between the two. Actor and stage manager.
Much of a stage manager’s work is deliberately invisible to an audience. When it is done exceptionally well, we simply experience the performance as seamless. But in a piece as technically and emotionally precise as Krapp’s Last Tape, the trust and closeness between Fossati and Marinker become an important part of what makes the production work.
What I found particularly moving was that this is not simply a piece about Alzheimer’s, ageing or memory. It is about the relationship we all have with the people we once were. We carry so many versions of ourselves the person we were, the person we imagined becoming, and the person we eventually find ourselves to be. Krapp is forced to confront those versions almost literally, through his own recorded voice. The past is right there in the room, but increasingly beyond his ability to fully access it.
There is sadness here, certainly, but also warmth and humour. That balance is important. Krapp is not reduced to his condition, he remains a complicated, flawed and recognisably human character. And perhaps that is what makes the moments of vulnerability so much more powerful.
I left Krapp’s Last Tape feeling genuinely moved, but also strangely reflective. It made me think about memory, regret, ageing and the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives. More than anything, it reminded me how fragile our sense of identity can be, and how much of a life can exist in the smallest fragments of memory.
A quiet, intimate and haunting piece of theatre, beautifully held by Marinker’s performance and the careful collaboration of the whole creative team.
A production that doesn’t shout for your attention it simply stays with you.
Krapp’s Last Tape is running until 5th September
For more information and tickets https://www.
Reviewer: Mary Fogg
On: 2nd September
