Tonight is the only night I’ll be able to see Peter do Krapp’s last tape. I dearly want to see it. But it’s sold out so I’m at The Cockpit awaiting a return.
Peter is 86 now. About five years ago he started coming to The Factory. I remember very clearly one night after a session with him in a pub in Borough Market. Pretty much every one of his running mates had gone forward, he told me. He was coming to The Factory to keep in trim and find a new community. Still going. I hope to God I’m the same if I last that long. I remember the wry grief in him, and the twinkle twinkling still.
He first did Krapp’s Last Tape maybe a decade ago. It’s one of Beckett’s best known plays. It’s about memory and aging. Peter was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago. He’s going back to this, working with tapes made for his original performance. He’s acting with his younger self.
The Beckett estate did a thing where you aren’t allowed to put his plays on with alternative staging. So you’ll never see Godot set on the Titanic or whatever. Which is probably for the best but it does mean that they are artifacts. But in this context it’s a good thing. Peter will be on familiar ground but also with the potential open barrier of that condition that every stage actor dreads. It’s why Gambon quit. You can only get away with reading your lines off the back of props for so long.
I’m happy the BBC got hold of the story and wrote an article about it. I want it to be sold out for him. But I also want to see it so hopefully there’ll be a return… I’ve got number 1 on the return queue so I’m sure it’ll work out…
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I just saw him in the foyer. Had a hug. He stores things in his phone so he knows who is who and he now has a ridiculous photo of me captioned “Al Barclays” because I didn’t have it heart to correct him while he’s trying to remember this show. “I first played this part in … … I think it was 1958 in the west of Ireland.” I still don’t have a ticket. Lots of familiar faces in the foyer though. Nobody I know well enough to come and greet but Peter and he’s pre-show and 86. Nice to see The Cockpit as a destination theatre.
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I HAVE NEVER SEEN THE COCKPIT SO CROWDED. Talking to the people who bought tickets, lots of them just bought it because of the BBC article. Great work the PR department. It IS a story. Wonderful actor with Alzheimer’s plays against tapes of his younger self in a play about memory.
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That was really beautiful and strange and sad. Peter was dignified and brilliant. It was deeply telling to see him like that in that show. I think I sat next to Gemma, an actress who was part of the reason I went to Guildhall.
How can we make Beckett relevant when it is enshrined and ossified like it is? Maybe there’s something about context. Good on them trying it. And God love Peter and his support network and everyone who made this happen for us all.
