Authentically Krapp

An amusing counterpoint to the post-truth nature of reality is the apparently widespread belief that the art of acting should on no account involve people pretending to be what they're not. The usual manifestation of this doctrine is the idea that non-heterosexual, transgender or disabled characters should only be played by non-heterosexual, transgender or disabled actors; the logical end point of such reasoning would presumably be that characters who are not themselves performers should always be played by non-performers, an arrangement already happily present in the career of Keanu Reeves.

The literalist superstition has once more emerged in a gimmick by the organisers of the Beckett Biennale, who have proclaimed long-term plans for a performance of Krapp's Last Tape to feature an unsimulated sixty-nine-year-old interacting with unsimulated recordings of his voice as a thirty-nine-year-old. The result will be "true vocal authenticity," that all-important attribute of stage performance which has been sadly missing in other quarters since the Scottish Play had the misfortune to be penned by William Shakespeare instead of by William McGonagall.