Acclaimed actor Peter Marinker draws inspiration from Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition
Peter Marinker is a London-based actor and audiobook narrator whose distinguished career has spanned more than six decades, with film credits including Flight 93, Love Actually, Event Horizon, Judge Dredd, and The Emerald Forest. He also worked with acclaimed director John Boorman as dialogue director and coach on The Tailor of Panama.
He is especially renowned for his long association with the works of Samuel Beckett, having co-founded The Godot Company with Beckett’s publisher, John Calder, to perform Beckett’s plays as Beckett intended.
Following a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, Marinker returned to one of Beckett’s most demanding roles, Krapp’s Last Tape. In preparing for the role, he drew on biologist Jeremy Griffith’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition, describing the influence it had on him in articles published by The Guardian and Broadway World.
Selected excerpts from The Guardian article
The 84-year-old actor has spent decades bringing Samuel Beckett’s plays to life. Does his recent diagnosis give him new insights into playing ‘sad clown’ Krapp in a drama about age and the battlefield of memory?
What a lot of Krapp. Pardon my French but Samuel Beckett’s haunting 1958 masterpiece about regret and isolation is having a moment…Beckett’s eponymous loner, who sits in his dark den and ritually listens to tapes he made as a younger man, is riding a new wave of popularity.
Peter Marinker first played Krapp half a lifetime ago and is preparing to star in a new production, reusing the tapes he recorded in 1983…
In the early 00s, Beckett’s publisher John Calder and Marinker co-founded the Godot Company to stage his works. Edward Beckett, the playwright’s nephew who became executor of his estate, “likes what Peter does”...
His performance will draw on his past—he describes his own Krapp-like study at home, “filled with chaos and recordings of all the things I’ve done”—but also his recent interest in biologist Jeremy Griffith’s research into intellect and instinct, which chimes with Krapp’s inner conflict…
Over his career he has been heard more than seen. “What is good is that you’re invisible.” Working with Pierce Brosnan on The Tailor of Panama, he saw the Bond star mobbed by crowds. “And I thought, no … You don’t want that.”…
Read the full article at The Guardian.
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Selected excerpts from the Broadway World article
London-based actor Peter Marinker, known for his extensive work on BBC Radio, his many audiobook recordings and his long association with Samuel Beckett’s publisher John Calder will perform Krapp’s Last Tape at The Cockpit this September.
Now aged 84 and recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Marinker brings decades of experience performing Beckett’s work as he returns to one of the playwright’s most demanding solo roles—with the function of memory in relation to selfhood at the heart of the production…
An introduction to Beckett’s publisher John Calder in the early 2000s led to forming The Godot Company, dedicated to performing ‘Beckett as Beckett intended’. Peter is now one of the most recognised interpreters of the playwright’s work. Aside from his Beckett roles, Peter’s body of work as an actor includes extensive work in BBC Radio and in audiobooks.
In preparing to play Krapp, Peter has drawn inspiration from the work of Australian biologist and author Jeremy Griffith and his writing on the human condition…
“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.”…
Read the full article at Broadway World.
