At a spry 78, the Irish actor is launching himself into Krapp’s Last Tape. He talks Beckett, being shy and feeling out of touch
Samuel Beckett’s one-man play Krapp’s Last Tape is about an old fellow listening to tapes of himself as a younger man, recounting his lost love. Stephen Rea, who once worked with Beckett, has seen it several times. And yet the Irish actor tends to think that the men who are good at looking decayed in the role are less good at sounding like their younger selves. Michael Gambon, John Hurt and Harold Pinter have all taken it on — any older actors in particular? “I don’t want to name names but I didn’t feel it was sufficient.”
In 2009 Rea decided to take matters into his own hands. He was already in his early sixties by then, not the 39-year-old that Beckett specified the 69-year-old Krapp would listen back to. But then he reckons ageing has changed since this monologue was first staged, in 1958: “People of 69 are no longer on their last legs. I remember my grandfather when he hit 70 just anticipating his death, but if you hit 79 now” — Rea is a healthy-looking 78 — “you don’t anticipate imminent death.”
So he went into a studio in Belfast, recorded the younger man’s lines and took a CD home, ready for the moment someone asked him to be Krapp….