Gary Oldman Shines in Becketts Mini-Masterpiece

Krapp’s Last Tape (Royal Court, London)

Verdict: Top banana

Star rating: 4/5 

After a gap of 39 years, Gary Oldman, is back on the London stage as Samuel Beckett’s Krapp: a grumpy old man as grubby and disheveled as his Slow Horses persona Jackson Lamb.

The piece opens with the Ink Spots number We Three (‘My echo, my shadow, and me’). An inspired touch, capturing the essence of this mini-masterpiece.

As 69-year-old Krapp replays his past, listening to a near unrecognisable echo of himself in the tape-recording he made on his 39th birthday, he discovers a forgotten younger shadow: making love to a beautiful woman, imagining he would become a great writer. And realises that it’s all over.

There’s just him; a failure, alone, regretful, as worthless as a banana skin.

For bananas feature large in this small playlet.

It begins in silence – and with a lightness before the darkness falls.

Krapp peels and chomps a banana, knocking back the final bit like a shot of whisky. He tosses the skin, expertly, into a box. Repeat. (A third banana remains uneaten. Later, he discovers another: darkly fossilised. Like him.)

As he sits at his desk, hemmed in by junk – evidently he’s a hoarder – Krapp is rather excited as he looks for the right tin, affectionately calling them ‘scoundrels’ as if they are naughty toys, swilling the word ‘spool’ around his mouth like a sommelier.

He hears the 39-year-old talk of his mother’s ‘viduity’. Mystified, he mouths the word then shuffles off to look up its meaning in a dictionary.

Astonishingly, Oldman has directed himself; which may account for the restraint and admirable lack of showiness in his performance. He makes it a portrait piece, the focus seldom moving from his face.

Superbly lit (by Malcolm Rippeth), as the light fades, Krapp’s gaze becomes increasingly inward. He is still, sculptural, more dead than alive. The red button of the tape recorder blinks. Until it too is extinguished. Compelling.

Krapp's Last Tape runs at the Royal Court until May 30.

Malory Towers (Touring)

Verdict: High jinks and cliff-hangers

Star rating: 4/5 

‘Malory Towers? You’re pathetic!’ says a mean girl at a modern comp to lanky dreamer Mary Lou, lost in Enid Blyton's spiffing tale.

Knocked unconscious, Mary Lou (Eden Barrie), now in gymslip and hat, is magicked to Paddington station where she and newbies are off to boarding school on the Cornish coast.

In the words of the school anthem (written by Emma Rice, who also adapted and directs), they are the ‘lucky girls to have the chance/To grow at Malory Towers’ and become ‘women the world can lean on’. (How I wished!!!)

Alicia (Molly Cheesley) is the class clown; Gwendoline (Rebecca Collingwood) a beastly bully; Irene (Stephanie Hockly) speaks through her music; passionate Darrell (Robyn Sinclair) must learn to keep her hot head; tomboy Bill (Zoë West) is a total hero and Sally (Bethany Wooding) a bit too sensible.

And a clifftop drama will enable the girls to discover more about themselves.

Originally staged in 2019 and killed by Covid, Rice’s revival now bounces back with lashings of playfulness, spirited performances and brand new puppetry (Lyndie Wright).

Actors in swimsuits mutate into tiny puppets who leap into the sea.

Big puppet arms grip more puppet arms to save a life.

Exceptionally silly, it feels like a private joke shared with a readily complicit audience.

Filled with horrid behaviour and super-wholesome sense and sensibility, this Forties set dorm-drama was lapped up on opening night (at Bath’s Theatre Royal) by entranced eight- and nostalgic 80-year-olds alike.

As if with all ages in mind, the songs include Benny Goodman’s Sandman, a gospel number for the train journey (as wonderful watercolour projections whizz by), and new songs by Ian Ross.

In a charming (if unnecessary) staging of Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rice demonstrates the collaborative process of theatre-making, with the director as an enabler.

There is the odd lump and bump, but it’s ripping fun, well worth catching.

For tour dates visit emmaricecompany.co.uk