Feck it! It’s Beckett

A note on Samuel Beckett and two performances of Krapp's Last Tape 40 years apart

In 1986, aged 21, I went to see a performance of Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London. I was a Beckett fan (earlier in the year I had seen Billie Whitelaw perform a trilogy of his short plays Enough, Footfalls and Rockaby at the same venue). Playing Krapp was the renowned actor and comedian Max Wall who was aged 78 at the time. It was one of the most affecting acting performances I’ve ever seen. There’s not a lot of live dialogue in the one hour play (much being recorded on the said tape), but I remember being captivated by Wall’s physical presence and facial expressions (the theatre at the Riverside at that time was a smaller space).

(Photo of Max Wall poster courtesy of Frederick Haynes)

Earlier this month I went to see Krapp’s Last Tape again. Krapp was played by Stephen Rea (at 78 the same age Max Wall was in his 1986 performance) in Vicky Featherstone’s terrific production at the Barbican Theatre. And I went with my daughter who at 22 is pretty much the same age I was when I first saw it.

It was another outstanding performance. The Barbican Theatre is a bigger space so Rea’s facial expressions were not as clear from my Circle seat but there was certainly a similar sense of presence and bearing that was utterly mesmerising.

Featherstone’s production had a more futuristic feel with deft lighting used to create a path leading off stage. I have long thought that Krapp’s Last Tape has a timeless quality to it and this production only served to strengthen that view (of which more later).

(Stephen Rea in Krapp’s Last Tape. Photo: Patricio Cassinoni)

Needless to say, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Beckett since.

In 1986 he resonated with the 21 year old me because he was enigmatic and cool in a way that appeals to angsty, self-conscious 21 year olds. Apart from the writing he was also the most photogenic writer there was. Those black and white pictures just got better as he got older. (Read John Minihan on his picture of Samuel Beckett in a cafe in Paris and John Haynes on his picture of Samuel Beckett smoking a French cigarette.)

As I got older and learned more about Beckett and his work, I also began to understand and appreciate other dimensions more, not least the (albeit dark) humour. This was aided by two very different, but wonderfully complementary, biographies published in 1996, Anthony Cronin’s Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist and James Knowlson’s (authorised) Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett.

Beckett of course remains an enigma. He is still often quoted - “Birth was the death of him”, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on”, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better” - even if people sometimes don’t know it’s him they are quoting.

He is also the source of one of my favourite anecdotes. Here’s how Anthony Cronin tells it in The Last Modernist:

When in the mid-sixties he was staying with John Calder in London they went with some of his BBC friends to Lord's cricket ground to see England play Australia. In fine weather one could sit in the members' enclosure drinking beer and watching cricket, both of which Beckett appeared to enjoy. As they sat there someone remarked on the lovely summer weather; and everyone else, including Beckett, concurred. It was a truly beautiful English summer day - 'The sort of day that makes one glad to be alive,' remarked someone else. 'Oh I don't think I would go quite so far as to say that,' Beckett replied.

This quote can be found via the index of Cronin’s book which refers to Beckett’s “zest for gloom”. Yet he was apparently good company. Hanif Kureishi when a guest on John Wilson’s excellent This Cultural Life radio programme and podcast recounted his time with Beckett at London’s Royal Court theatre as follows:

“There was a pub next door to the Royal Court. Everybody went into it at the end of the day. And I used to sit there with him. And he was a very, very friendly person, not intimidating at all. And he liked to be amused. And also he liked women a lot, I noticed”.

How I would have loved to have been there.

Stephen Rea also spoke of Beckett’s strong affinity with actors in a Q&A after the Barbican performance: “We loved him…And he loved us”. Rea also had a couple of terrific verbal “actor’s notes” from Beckett which he also cites in an excellent interview with Samira Ahmed in a recent episode of BBC Radio Four’s Front Row.

Responding to a question at the post Barbican performance Q&A about the current relevance of Krapp’s Last Tape, Vicky Featherstone referred to the futuristic nature of the play and her production. Which brings me back to its timeless quality. It seemed relevant to me when I saw it 40 years ago and does again now. This is in part a reflection of my own differing perspectives - the 21 year old me and the current me who is the father of a 22 year old. But it’s also about more enduring and generic reflections on growing older - it is after all centred on a 69 year old man listening to a recording of his 39 year old self.

No matter what, I have no doubt that Krapp’s Last Tape will still be performed in another 40 years’ time because it will still be relevant. I wonder if my daughter will go and take any children of her own?