The double bill at the Royal Court (Leo Simpe-Asante’s curtain raiser, followed by Samuel Beckett’s classic).
Godot’s To-Do List charts an endless number of tasks for its protagonist, the number of which is quantified by a party popper sound effect. Flora Ashton’s quasi supermarket checkout voice is a playful antithesis to Shakeel Hakim’s Godot, a frantic figure decked out in suit and bowler hat. Such tasks range from the banal to the impossible to the repetitive, with chunks of overlapping lines generating either acute tension or comedy.
In this world, assumptions are questioned or subverted: i.e. when it is suggested that the omnipotent voice would make a good one for something akin to a mindfulness podcast, it later traps Godot within in a repeated instruction to ‘take a breath’. When Godot seems as though he has found some truth in this precarious space, he is pushed further to prove it or test it or enact it. As a result, the play’s humour had a cheeky, clownish quality, whilst the absurdist monologue felt hard earned by the character’s full-to-the-brim frustration. Of itself, the play is an impressive feat from Jerwood New Playwright 2026 Leo Simpe-Asante and a perfect palette cleanser leading us into Beckett’s world, out of our own.
Originating as a York Theatre Royal production, Krapp’s Last Tape is an ode to both Beckett’s legacy as well as Gary Oldman’s history at the Court, who both stars and directs. As Krapp, Oldman inhabits an attic loaded with hunks of the past all laid to rot: cobwebs strewn over dusty books, boxes inside locked drawers, and spool after spool of tape. Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design converted the room into a ghostly pseudospace. In particular, the singular overhead lamp was reminiscent of a candle occupying an emptiness, preying on the protagonist’s loneliness.
The piece opens with Krapp eating two bananas very slowly, where each chomp incites a unique reaction. The converse expressions almost appear to tap into the character’s relationship to the past: does the tape’s ritual help Krapp shoo it or yearn for it? Ensnared by the closed circuit of the tape, Krapp relives the memory by running it from start to middle, or middle to end. Repeating phrases from the tape, or playing around with the word ‘spool’, it appeared as if he sought to harness some agency from his younger, sprightlier self.
Sadly, I was caught on the aching feeling that I had absorbed all the play had to offer within its first two thirds. Snagging on last century, this performance felt more like a guilty pleasure for those coming to celebrate Beckett rather than a radical punching-up piece that might often be expected in the Court’s programme.
This fact did not detract from the masterful acting of Gary Oldman, who charged the stretches of quiet with a soulful sorrow. We were treated to light specks of humour from his autonomous bumbling and alcoholic self-sufficiency. Despite its somewhat dated feel, the show interrogated the self through an eerie, unique ritual.
Reviewer: Eleanor Hall
Reviewed: 11th May 2026
North West End UK Rating:
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