Krapp's Last Voicenote

Gary Oldman and Stephen Rea are both performing Beckett's solo show, Krapp's Last Tape. Tim Bano and Holly Williams compare them, via voicenote

Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape at York Theatre Royal. Photo: Giselle Schmidt

By Tim Bano and Holly Williams

This is an edited version of a series of voicenotes discussing Krapp’s Last Tape at York Theatre Royal, and Krapp’s Last Tape, at the Barbican in London. For the full version of the unedited voicenotes, featuring Sylvie the cat and Holly having an existential break-down, listen below.

30/04/2025

Holly: [18:08] Spool. Spoooool.

[18:10] This is Holly’s first tape.

Hello Tim. You can probably hear, I’m just walking along the Rivelin Valley in Sheffield. It’s actually a week since I saw Krapp’s Last Tape, so this is already a memory of a show that is very much about memory. And you are about to see a different version at the Barbican. Do you know the play? I saw it with Michael Gambon quite a few years ago. And I definitely read it when I was a student and absolutely loved it, which given it’s a play that’s very much about old age, looking back, reflecting on things… it’s not the most obvious choice maybe for a teenager or twenty-something to love.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to chatting with you via voicenote. The voicenote being the modern equivalent of a tape recorder!

Tim: [18:49] Hello Holly. Tim Tape, take one. If you are hearing this, then I am dead… No, if you're hearing this, then you are in the future and we are getting started on our mixed-media review of two overlapping productions of Krapp’s Last Tape. So you’ve seen the one in the north, and I’m about to see, in a few minutes, the one in the south.

Do you like voice notes? I mean, I can’t stand them. I feel like they come with a sense of inbuilt arrogance, like I'm too busy to sit and type something to you, but I assume you are not too busy to put your headphones and just hear me over and over again… Anyway. I’ve never seen Krapp’s Last Tape before. I’m very excited. The one I am seeing has got Stephen Rea in it and it was on Dublin and now it’s in London. I don’t know anything about it, apart from that it’s about tapes, which is presumably why I’m recording this.

Holly: [20:43] Oh no, I feel like I've dragged you into doing something that's going to be awful if you hate voicenotes! I kind of love them.

So I guess for anyone who doesn’t know, Krapp’s Last Tape is a Samuel Beckett play. Krapp is 69 and he is listening back, as he does every year, to a tape he made previously on his birthday, reflecting on the year that had just passed. And then he records a new tape… So on his 69th birthday Krapp’s listening back to his tape from his 39th birthday. And on that birthday, he listens back to one from his twenties. So you get three slices of… Krapp.

Gary Oldman at York Theatre Royal. Photo: Giselle Schmidt

[20:50] At York Theatre Royal, the headline is obviously Gary Oldman. He’s 67, so pretty close to Krapp’s age, and quite adorably he is doing it because York Theatre Royal is where he first started his career: he made his debut there in Dick Whittington in which he apparently played the cat. I was also reading that it’s 38 years since he last was on stage when he did Carol Churchill’s Serious Money, which I would've fucking loved to see. Anyway, I think it is extremely cool that he came back to a regional theatre where he started his career. I daresay he’s making some money out of it – tickets can cost £75, £85, which when you consider that Krapp’s Last Tape is a very short play, only 50 minutes long… but it’s probably making quite a lot of money for a regional theatre that doesn’t usually get stardust sprinkled over it.

But I do wonder if people that don’t know this play think they’re going to get some epic huge performance and then they get a man sat at a desk in a dusty attic surrounded by crap? (A different kind of Krapp). He’s basically quite still just listening to the tapes, and when he’s not, he’s shuffling around in the dust and eating bananas. For an actor who can be a very big presence on screen he’s fairly contained: a small performance of a small play… I don’t know if it is a small play – I think it's a play that has this whole life in it – but it’s a small play in minutes. And certainly in Gary Oldman’s version, it isn't showboaty in any way. And one thing I love about this choice to go back to that theatre, is it does intersect really nicely with the play: the idea of returning to your past selves, to your memory, reflecting on your life and where it’s taken you.

Tim: [21:45] Oh, Holly, what an evening. Sorry for not replying earlier, I had a drink with my brother after the show and now I’m waiting for a bus. I kind of had two shows. We got into the auditorium, Stephen Rea came on, he was great. Lots of hair, looking like a very unapproachable secondhand book seller. He eats a couple of bananas, and then he brings on his box of tapes. While all this had been happening, there was also this meditative music playing, very, very faintly. And I was thinking ‘that’s quite nice, I mean a bit generic, but it’s okay.’ And then people a couple of rows in front of me turned around to two women and said, ‘can you turn that off please?’ So the women checked their bags and there was nothing there. And then a few more people around us started looking annoyed and crotchety and saying, ‘Where's that sound coming from?’