After decades away from the theatre, Gary Oldman is to return to the Yorkshire playhouse where he once starred as a pantomime cat. The Oscar winner, who is currently back on TV screens in Slow Horses, will perform Samuel Beckett’s monologue Krapp’s Last Tape at York Theatre Royal next spring.
It is a long-awaited return to the stage for the star, who started his acting career performing in York and with Glasgow’s Citizens theatre before moving on to London’s Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
First performed by Patrick Magee in 1958, Beckett’s play concerns a melancholic 69-year-old man who replays recordings he made decades earlier in life and reflects on lost love in between bites of his beloved bananas. A tragicomic reckoning with ambition and failure, it has been performed by actors including John Hurt, Stephen Rea, Albert Finney and Harold Pinter.
Paul Crewes, CEO of York Theatre Royal, said that Oldman had visited at the start of the year. “It was fascinating hearing him recount stories of his time as a young man, in his first professional role on the York Theatre Royal stage,” he said. “In that context, when we started to explore ideas, we realised Krapp’s Last Tape was the perfect project.”
The production begins previews on 14 April, and runs until 17 May. No further dates are planned. Tickets go on sale to the general public on 16 November.
Oldman, who grew up in London, studied acting at Rose Bruford College. He graduated in 1979 and started performing in York that year. He had roles there in Privates on Parade, Cabaret and Dick Whittington, playing the cat.
“Gary has gone on to become one of our greatest screen actors but I’m afraid he was a bit of a lightweight when it came to pantomime,” the theatre’s long-serving panto dame Berwick Kaler recalled in 2018. “He kept fainting inside the costume. On at least three occasions I had to turn to the audience and say, ‘Oh dear, boys and girls, I think the poor pussy cat has gone to sleep!’”
In 1987 Oldman starred in Caryl Churchill’s play Serious Money at the Royal Court opposite Lesley Manville, with whom he had a short marriage. After prominent roles at the Royal Court and with the RSC in the 1980s, he concentrated on a film career that included portrayals of Lee Harvey Oswald, Dracula and Beethoven in the early 90s. In 2012 he was nominated for an Oscar for playing John le Carré’s George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He won the best actor Oscar for Darkest Hour in which he played Winston Churchill.