Samuel West to play Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape – in 2036!

The Beckett Biennale has announced that a new production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape is set to star Samuel West (All Creatures Great & Small; Twelfth Night, RSC), scheduled for 2036.

In Beckett’s short play, Krapp, who is 69, listens to a recording made by his younger self back on his 39th birthday.

In a world first, the acclaimed actor will star in the show, alongside a recording of his younger self, which he recorded 19 years ago in 2006, when he was 39.

From next year, the Beckett Biennale will start celebrating the Irish playwright, including this production of Krapp’s Last Tape scheduled for their sixth festival, in 2036.

West told The Observer newspaper that, “The first words of the play are ‘39 today’. And I thought to myself back then, I can really only do this once. So I asked Katie [Mitchell], who I really admired, if she would consider directing me in it when we were older, if we were still around. She has messaged me recently to say, ‘Count me in’.”

“I last listened to it a few weeks after making it,” West said to The Observer, “and immediately thought I could do better. I went back to the director [Katie Mitchell] and said, ‘I want to re-record them,’ and she, very properly, said, ‘You can’t. That’s the whole point.’”

The Beckett Biennale starts in July 2026 in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, where the playwright was born, and Greystones in County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland, organised by Seán Doran and Liam Browne of Arts Over Borders.

A limited number of tickets for the 2036 production will be on sale from Arts Over Borders on Beckett’s birthday, on 13 April.

A number of other Krapp’s Last Tape productions are coming up, including Gary Oldman starring in a York Theatre Royal production in April; and Stephen Rea starring in the play at the Barbican Theatre this April.

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Main photo: Samuel West. Photo by Bruce Chatterton