'Wicked sense of humour': John Minihan on photographing Gary Oldman in Krapp's Last Tape

Irish Examiner

26-05-2025

'There is no Memory in Beckett. Even Krapp's Last Tape has no memory in the usual sense of associated recall, but rather, a mechanical process set in motion by a jar or vibration: the closing of or opening of a door.' - William S Burroughs, The Adding Machine
Samuel Beckett knew the essence of theatre is that an actor is present in the flesh on the stage in a way in which he is not on the screen. Academy award winner Gary Oldman returned to the UK stage after a 37-year hiatus in April of this year to perform Samuel Beckett's one-act play, Krapp's Last Tape, at the York Theatre Royal.
For over 50 years I have been photographing Beckett plays: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days and Krapp's Last Tape. All played with an array of actors from Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Billie Whitelaw, John Hurt, Michael Gambon, Max Wall, Pierre Chabert, Barry McGovern, Stephen Rea and Robert Wilson.
They all bring their own exuberance to the roles they play. Trying to define Krapps Last Tape is like well trying to define the overall dramatic works of Samuel Beckett - it's complex yet simple, ever evolving and wildly addictive.
Gary Oldman in Krapp's Last Tape. Picture: John Minihan
When I heard last November that Oldman was doing Krapp's Last Tape, I knew that I wanted to see and photograph him. He's an actor with a wicked sense of humour. I knew he would bring something special to the part in a work that's Beckett's most approachable stage play and my favourite to photograph.
Krapp is a sentimental 69-year-old listening to his 30-something voice on a spool from his archive, looking back regretfully upon a life lived in which he sacrificed love to artistic ambition. We see Krapp onstage in an old white collarless shirt, and black waistcoat in which he keeps his pocket-watch and a banana.
I told Gary about the time I photographed Max Wall who played Krapp at the Riverside Studios in London in 1987, bringing his own brand of music-hall humour and relishing the word 'spool'. 'Spoool,' he crooned.
I was in the dressing room with Max where he started eating the banana; staff were dispatched to get another banana before the show could start. Music-hall humour is strewn through the world of Samuel Beckett, and the plays often benefit in performance from a less reverent attitude than is usually the case.
It's becoming harder to photograph plays in the West End of London. I was invited to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London in 2024 to see Waiting for Godot. The producers could not have been more helpful, but they had their own photographer doing the stills for newspaper publicity and reviews.
Back in the day there was always a photo call for the main theatre photographers in London. I knew Douglas H Jeffrey, the doyen of theatre photographers who I first met when I was an apprentice in the Daily Mail darkroom in 1962.
Douglas supplied Fleet Street's newspapers with beautiful black and white photographs of shows in the London's West End. He loved theatre, always wore a beret and an artist smock with pockets to hold film and lense.
He was never interested in being interviewed about his work. I remember he photographed the playwright Joe Orton in 1967 only months before he was murdered in Islington by his partner Kenneth Halliwell. Gary Oldman played Orton in the film, Prick Up Your Ears, in 1987.
My friend Adrian Dunbar, who has directed Beckett in Ireland, London and Paris, was in York for nearly a week supporting Gary in rehearsals of Krapp's Last Tape. I met Gary with Adrian, and the pair were happy, laughing and joking. They go back as actors to the early 1970s to the Royal Court in London and the RSC. Listening to them, it could have been a scene from Estragon and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot.
John Minihan's image of John Hurt in Krapps Last Tape in 1998.
I was also relishing the opportunity to go back to the beautiful city of York which hosted its first Beckett Festival in June 2011. I had an exhibition of my Beckett photographs at York University together with a range of world-class writers like the Nobel laureate JM Coetzee, who I photographed outside the door of York Minister.
The event also featured a performance by the renowned Gare St Lazare players with Cork actor Conor Lovett performing his arresting adaptions of Samuel Beckett's short stories, First Love and The End.
I loved being back in York with Adrian and meeting Gary and his photographer wife Giselle and their children. The show is dedicated to John Hurt and Michael Gambon. The production team even used the same recorder that those great actors used for their shows at Dublin's Gate Theatre.
Samuel Beckett would, I believe, have given the nod to Gary Oldman who seemed to have found his perfect home.
Dublin-born photographer John Minihan has been based in West Cork for many years. As well as capturing famous images of the likes of Princess Diana, Edna O'Brien, and Francis Bacon, he also took several photographs of Samuel Beckett
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