Riveting five-star performance

An old-fashioned curtain fell away. There, on an almost bare, twilit stage, and fixing me, a mere six feet away, with a confident glare of his significant eyes, was Mr Pinter himself.

He sat in a dressing gown and an electric wheel-chair, at a desk on which stood tin boxes, an antique tape-recorder and a vast accounts book. Pinter said nothing - at some length.

I lowered my eyes. I was too close for comfort. A big, suitable pause enveloped the auditorium. Krapp's Last Tape was poised to spool.

For the 50th anniversary of the Royal Court, where most of his work has been staged, Pinter is playing Samuel Beckett, the writer whose work has been influence, inspiration and pleasure for him.

Ian Rickson's production of this classic one-acter is beautifully shrouded in desolation. Designer Hildegard Bechtler creates a perfect wasteland, a vision of a hermetic, run-down life, with shelves of desiccated bric-a-brac.

There are few more potent theatrical images than that of Krapp, an elderly writer who sits listening to old tapes he has recorded annually about his vacuous life. An irreconcilable gulf exists between the old man and his younger, hopeful self, who recalls a love that came to nothing. It is as if they are strangers to each other.

In Pinter's fresh, riveting performance, which never allows a trace of wistful romanticism, Krapp has a last look back in anger. It is a blank, uncomprehending anger that erupts as he hurls the boxes onto the floor. It is the restless fury of a man who can run tapes but whose incipient senility ensures he can scarcely recognise or understand his younger self, despite the nagging compulsion to search for it.

Pinter varies his voice cleverly: on the tapes Krapp sounds relatively young, as pompously selfabsorbed as Beckett intended, while present-day Krapp has lapsed into hoarseness.

Pinter's stoic bravery in putting on this remarkable show shines through: he sits and moves around in a wheel-chair from necessity: Krapp's long-winded, physically demanding business with the bananas has had to be excised. The playwright stood at the end, acknowledging the cheers. He walked out unsteadily, but his crucial place in modern theatre is secure.

Closes 24 October.

Krapp's Last Tape
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs At The Royal Court
Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS