By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN?: Saturday 9 May, opens 11 May and runs through 30 May 2026 RUNTIME: 85 minutes (including Godot’s To-Do List)

Oscar winner Oldman (Apple’s Slow Horses) directs and stars in this Samuel Beckett monologue which he originally brought to the York Theatre Royal last year, the venue where he made his professional acting debut in 1979.

• Read on for reasons including how this is a curious choice by an actor we’ve loved light up the big and TV screen

It returns to the Royal Court where it played in 1958 as a curtain-raiser to Beckett’s Endgame and it arrives here as part of the venue’s 70th birthday celebrations.

There’s so much then that’s appropriate about this setting and to applaud about an older actor paying back his good fortune towards the end of his career to the stage that made it all possible.

Which is why this story of a man on his 69th birthday sitting alone listening to the echoes of his younger self feels so curiously underpowered and disappointing.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve rushed across town from a brilliant Equus to this 75-minute show that starts ridiculously early at 6.30pm and will be over before many West End shows have even begun their Saturday night performances.

Perhaps the venue’s staff and all those involved in this production need an early night on Saturday after the challenges of the week behind them but it’s a real challenge to make a 2nd show of the day if you’re already at another matinee in a more central part of London.

The play opens with Krapp sitting in his den in the dark, lit by a light above his desk. On his desk are a tape recorder and a number of tins containing reels of recorded tape.

He listens to and laughs at a tape of his 39-year-old self reviewing a recording of him 10 years earlier describing the young man he was back then as idealistic and unrealistic in his expectations.

He also mentions his recent literary disappointments mirrored by his sex life reduced to periodic visits by an old prostitute.

Opening the performance every night is Godot’s To-Do List, a new Beckett-inspired short play by Jerwood New Playwright Leo Simpe-Asante appearing only to bulk out what is on offer here.

Krapp’s Last Tape is a curious choice by an actor we’ve loved light up the screen as the foul Jackson Lamb in Apple’s Slow Horses and as lively Joe Orton in film Prick Up Your Ears. Amazing to have seen him onstage but his adequate performance fails to lift the underwhelming material.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Royal Court Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen a Gary Oldman show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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