‘Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana’: Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape

On Friday, we went to see Gary Oldman perform Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Theatre Royal.

I have never seen the play before, so my thoughts and reflections are simply a response to Oldman’s performance, and Oldman’s performance was spellbinding.

I think it is safe to describe the play as ‘minimalist’: a solo performer, a single room, a single desk on which sat a single tape recorder. Even the cluttered-up study— a wasteland of  historical manuscripts— was a single entity: a symmetrical framing of the drama itself.

This reduction of theatrical elements was mirrored in the script itself - all 48 pages of it, which I read last night.

Oldman’s Krapp doesn’t walk onto the set; he gradually appears climbing out of a room below. He is described by Beckett as a “wearish (sickly, withered) old man”. He is in fact 69 years old. He produces a banana, peels it, and eats it. He discovers a second one and peels and eats this too. He seems pleased with himself, but we are left a tad bemused. He scuttles off, returning with an old ledger. He finds the entry he’s looking for and then gets the corresponding tape. He carefully loads it onto the tape recorder, presses play, and listens.

Each year on his birthday, Krapp has made a habit of recording a tape, reflecting on the past year. He chooses to listen to a tape he recorded thirty years ago, when he was 39. The younger Krapp regrets that he has just eaten three bananas. He refrained from eating a fourth. He says bananas are "fatal things" for a man with his condition (I’m going to give the Krapp joke a miss).

As he listens, his younger voice—confident, ambitious, brimming with hope—recounts significant moments in his life: his promising career as a writer, the end of a meaningful love affair—he believed he was finally free from emotional entanglements and could fully dedicate himself to his “vision”—and a profound sense of fulfilment in transcending “youthful passions” and embarking on a life of purpose and solitude.

The younger (39-year-old) Krapp reminisces about a tape he made about 10 or 12 years ago. He’s been listening to it at random. Back then, he was still living with Bianca. He’s glad he escaped that relationship; he thinks it was a “hopeless business”. The younger Krapp chuckles at how youthful and aspirational he sounded on the tape. The older Krapp laughs along with it. Both can clearly see the fool they were, but only time will reveal the extent of their foolishness.

Two pivotal moments in the tape: a lost love. Krapp keeps replaying the intimate moment captured of the two lovers embracing on a punt. He yearns to revisit it, but it brings him pain. Secondly, the 37-year-old Krapp recalls the death of his mother. As he begins to elaborate—sitting on a bench outside the nursing home, waiting for the news—the older Krapp pauses and rewinds the tape. He listens intently, leaning closer to hear. The word “viduity” perplexes the older Krapp, so he stops the tape and retrieves a dictionary. He discovers that “viduity” refers to the state or condition of being or remaining a widow. It’s also a type of bird. The older Krapp looks up with delight and exclaims, “the vidua-bird!” The disconnect is numbing.

Krapp loads a fresh tape and begins recounting his year. He is scathing in his assessment of his thirty-nine-year-old self. He finds that he has nothing he wants to leave behind for posterity. He mentions a trip to the park and attending Vespers, where he dozed off and fell off the pew. He also mentions his recent literary disappointments: “seventeen copies sold”, presumably of his last book, eleven of which have gone to uninterested readers and to foreign libraries. His sex life has been reduced to periodic visits by an old prostitute.

The play’s narrative structure is unpredictable, mirroring the protagonist’s whims. The simple and straightforward story of the elderly Krapp alone in his room, reviewing his tapes, becomes complicated by the tapes themselves. These tapes introduce a second narrative that unfolds out of chronological order. The middle-aged Krapp begins stories and speaks to the audience at length through the recordings. Then there is a third narrative: when Krapp senior listens to his 39-year-old self talking about listening to a recording of his twenty-year-old self.

Here we have the genius: time itself as a character. The play presents a unique exploration of the passage of time. By having Krapp listen to his younger self, the audience witnesses multiple versions of the same person simultaneously—past, present, and implied future selves all coexist on stage. This temporal layering adds depth and emotional richness to the play.

Beckett employs silences, pauses, and fragmented language to convey the disjointedness of memory and identity. Krapp’s speech pattern mirrors this fragmentation, reflecting the existential concerns and the breakdown of traditional narratives. The elderly Krapp’s disruptive actions, such as pausing the tape, rewinding, or fast-forwarding the reel, occur when a story or memory becomes too painful for him to endure.

This appears to be an analysis of the play itself, which, of course, it is. The crux of any critique of Oldman’s performance lies in the fact that Beckett’s drama revolves around an internal conflict. The tension arises from the contrast between the Krapp of the past and the Krapp of the present—a clash of ambition and regret, youth and age, and the unreliable nature of memory. This shift from external to internal conflict was a novel concept and established the tone for much of post-war modernist drama.

Performing Krapp’s Last Tape is an immense challenge that demands technical precision, emotional depth, stamina, and extraordinary subtlety. All of this is accomplished while mostly remaining silent or reacting to a voice from the past. Gary Oldman’s performance embodied all these qualities, as well as a stage presence that only great actors possess.