Lisa Dwan

No Samuel Beckett play is set in stone

As his theatrical notebooks show, Beckett was the least rigid of playwrights, constantly distilling, clarifying and adapting the text to individual actors and venues

Samuel Beckett and Martin Held rehearse Krapp’s Last Tape in Berlin’s Schiller Theater in 1969, a production Beckett himself directed. {Getty Images}

  • The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Krapp’s Last Tape

    James Knowlson

    Faber, pp. 320, £40

  • The Shorter Plays

    S.E. Gontarski

    Faber, pp. 512, £40

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