Old Krapp, who has a deliberately unheroic, even vulgar name, is listening to tapes he made 40 year previously. He wants to record one last tape, as if to sum it all up.
Krapp comes on in a grey bathrobe and sits at his desk where there is a tape recorder. He pulls out some tapes from a drawer and threads them through the machine. He doesn’t do much: he eats bananas and listens to himself as a younger man. He comments on his previous self with contempt, he takes a note scribbled on an old envelope from his pocket, presumably of what he might say, and discards it.
Done now, and in this form, this classic one act play takes on an additional patina of antiquity. It has been two generations of technology since reel-to-reel tape recorders were a frequently used tool. Krapp mouthing ‘spooool’ at the tape spool is indeed the response we give to this antiquated artefact.
Eating one banana after another replicates the tedium of everyday life for the very old, something I understand now but did not when, much younger, I first saw the play.
Peter Marinker captures every nuance such as when Krapp looks up a word he has forgotten in a dictionary, but when another unknown word is heard he moves as if to look it up but then doesn’t bother. What’s the point? This is an actor completely immersed in his character.
Another, deeper level of interpretation is given for this performance: Peter Marinker has Alzheimer’s disease and is given considerable assistance throughout. He is led on by a stage manager, he receives movement cues from an earpiece, the text of his lines is on a screen on the wall. This really is a person fighting the decay of his faculties.
Marinker was a founder member of the Godot Company which is devoted to performing the work of Samuel Beckett. He performed Krapp’s Last Tape when he was a young man, and it is those recordings which the present day Peter Makinker, in the character of Krapp, is listening to. This gives us the unique experience of the actor Marinker responding to the actor Marinker just as Krapp responds to Krapp.
Beckett would have approved. This is the most obviously autobiographical of his plays with references to the death of his mother, heavy drinking and sex with ‘a bony old ghost of a whore.’  Here he confronts ‘the dark I have always struggled to keep under.’
Peter Marinker deserved the standing ovation the full house at the Cockpit gave him for this excellent performance. A profound theatrical experience – bravo.
Venue: The Cockpit
Playwright: Samuel Beckett
Director: Dave Wybrow
Cast: Peter Marinker
Duration: 55 minutes
Until: 5 September 2026