At 85, he returned to the stage with Alzheimer's

Peter Marinker, an 85-year-old actor diagnosed with Alzheimer's, returned to the London stage this September to play Krapp in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, a solo role about a man listening to recordings of his younger self. The four-day run at the Cockpit Theatre raised funds for the Alzheimer's Society. Marinker was diagnosed after struggling during rehearsals for an earlier production. This time he came back with an autocue, a prompt earpiece and extra rehearsal time, and the production folded in tape recordings of his own 1983 performance of the same part. "We are doing this production because of Peter's Alzheimer's, not in spite of it," said director Dave Wybrow. Krapp uses a tape recorder to remember the words of his young self. Marinker, who spent a career believing other people's characters so audiences would believe them too, found the parallel almost too neat. He said he felt very excited to do the show.