Stage review Oldman's sentimental journey makes for startling piece of theatre

Gary Oldman's decision to stage this work at York Theatre Royal is infused with sentimentality.

- Arifa Akbar

Gary Oldman's decision to stage this work at York Theatre Royal is infused with sentimentality. It is, he explains in the programme, where he made his professional stage debut in 1979. The return, from a lifetime of film work (though his Slow Horses TV role is very much still in play), carries the sense of an older man in conversation with his younger self.

Samuel Beckett's 1958 one-act play is a monologue that becomes an existential encounter with past selves and voices we incorporate within us across a lifetime. So a crabby writer sits down on his 69th birthday for the annual ritual of tape-recording all that has come to be over his past year and then listening to the voice of his younger self - or selves - at first with haughty judgment of the romantic he once was, before the regret and desolation creep in.