Peter Marinker will perform Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at The Cockpit Theatre this September, marking a powerful return to one of the playwright’s most demanding solo roles.
The production runs from Wednesday 2 September to Saturday 5 September 2026 at The Cockpit in London, with press welcome to attend any performance subject to availability.
Now aged 84 and recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Marinker brings decades of experience with Beckett’s work to a play that places memory and selfhood at its core.
In Beckett’s 1958 one-act monologue, the audience encounters Krapp alone on his birthday, listening to tape recordings he has made on previous anniversaries.
Now aged 69, Krapp reflects on a recording made at 39, which itself revisits earlier tapes, as he records what he tells us will be his final message.
This new Cockpit production will incorporate reel-to-reel recordings made by Peter Marinker the last time he played Krapp in 1983.
A stage manager will be present throughout, with any in-ear prompts running alongside the performance to foreground the relationship between memory, cognition and re-cognition.
Following his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, returning to Krapp’s Last Tape became a deeply personal decision for Marinker, allowing him to draw directly on lived experience.
Proceeds from the run will be donated to The Alzheimer’s Society, with Peter supported throughout by the production team and his family.
Peter Marinker said: “When I first saw Waiting for Godot at Stratford East in 1961, I had no idea what it was or what to expect – and no idea whatsoever of the impact Samuel Beckett and his writing would have on the rest of my life”.
He added: “As an actor I love to share other’s created characters and words. I believe them and convey them to an audience for them to believe them. Nowadays we use gadgets to remember things, to remember ourselves. Krapp uses a tape recorder to remember the words of his young self. A couple of years ago I discovered I had Alzheimer’s disease. Now I feel very excited to do the show”.
He continued: “My brain is taking me on a journey with more of the right side of my brain than the left . The right brain of instinct and feeling rather than the left brain of calculation and thoughts. In our society the left is the dominant side. I feel that the excessive reliance on the left is taking us, or in my case, my children and grandchildren, over a cliff. Now I’m reaching back into my past to find something to help me in the present.”
Director Dave Wybrow said: “We are doing this production because of Peter’s Alzheimer’s, not in spite of it. Our relationship with memory is never perfect yet it dominates our sense of self and our sense of meaning. Krapp is the perfect play to describe that. And doing the play with Peter is the perfect way to do it.”
Wybrow added: “One aim is to show that creative work can be accessible to artists as well as audiences as we get older. But there is also an exploration taking place; of the role that memory, belief and decision-making inter-relate to define who we are and what we make real, moment to moment, age to age and now, this instant.”
The production is directed by Cockpit artistic director Dave Wybrow and designed by performer and designer Duncan Henderson.
The creation process will be documented by videographer Chris Lincé, creating a lasting legacy of Marinker’s performance.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
