In a world of instant gratification, it’s a joy to buy tickets 11 years in advance
Samuel Beckett’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ will first be staged at the Beckett Biennale in 2036 – good things come to those who wait
A quick search through my emails shows that I signed up to the enjoyably titled “Waiting for Godot mailing list” in December 2023, bought tickets in February 2024 and finally saw the production in October last year. That version, starring Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw, carefully toed Samuel Beckett’s fragile line between humour and abject misery. As with much of Beckett’s work, the play was strikingly relevant, despite being more than 70 years old. But the 10 months of build-up to taking my seat in London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket pale in comparison to the wait facing fellow Beckett fans who have the opportunity, next month, to buy tickets to the 2036 and 2038 Beckett Biennale in Ireland. Those festivals will feature special performances of Krapp’s Last Tape, a two-hander between an actor playing the 69-year-old Krapp and tape recordings of the same character 30 years earlier.
“It is exciting to think that the play will arrive as Beckett envisioned it on page,” Beckett Biennale director Séan Doran recently told Monocle. “I doubt that the idea of a nutty theatrical impresario staging this work far into the future would have crossed Beckett’s mind.” As nutty theatrical impresarios go, Doran is a particularly patient one. In 2006 he enlisted actor Samuel West to record the taped parts of the script. Then, in 2008, he managed to convince Richard Dormer to spend his 39th birthday in the recording studio to do the same. As well as the satisfying artistic precision and the not-so-small risk of it not coming off, it’s hard to imagine those performances not swelling with meaning for both actors and audience.
For those who buy tickets in April, it’s an 11 or 13 year wait to take your seat and witness West or Dormer take the stage, hear their taped younger selves and muse on whether Krapp’s best years have passed. In a world of next-day delivery and instant gratification, the project proposes an enticing leap of faith and reminds you of the value of taking your time. It’s a perfect Beckettian ploy: the twinkling prospect of something transcendent but no promises of a satisfying end. I, for one, am happy to hold tight.
