Google Krapp’s Last Tape and you’ll see the word ‘masterpiece’ repeated again and again. But one of the joys of being in a festival/fringe city is the ability to watch a play like this against the context of a Fringe teeming with new ideas, norms and visual flourishes. Does Samuel Beckett’s 1958 masterpiece have anything left to teach us? Or should we simply forget all of that and approach it as ‘just another play’, if we can?

Certainly, the directorial presence of Vicky Featherstone, who has directed more than 50 world premieres and very much specialises in new work, intrigues. So too does a program note informing us that Stephen Rea actually taped himself reading Krapp’s ‘old’ tape decades ago, without ever knowing he’d get to play the part (the playback of a tape seemingly recorded by Krapp three decades beforehand is integral to the action). Very meta. Suddenly things don’t feel quite so… mid-century.

And Rea is a revelation: as his craggy features soften and harden seemingly at will, there are touches of the lonely clown in his performance. It’s subtle and striking and he completely inhabits the role. There’s also something unbearably poignant about the way Jamie Vartan’s beautifully stark set plays with light and perspective: Krapp seems to loom, larger than life, imposing himself in a way he never managed to do in real life. There’s truth here too and, yes, relevance: in a society where we’re seemingly more connected than ever before, loneliness is endemic, and no matter how young you are, potential is always finite. So it seems Beckett still has plenty to say, and Stephen Rea and this production find new ways of saying it.

Krapp’s Last Tape, Dunstan Playhouse, until Saturday 8 March, times vary.