The Actor's Nightmare actress Ellen tells him that it is a Samuel Beckett play called "Checkmate" (which seems to have elements of the plays "Endgame", "Happy Days", and "Waiting for Godot"). Literally forced on stage, George attempts to improvise his lines; however, the play inconsistently shifts between scenes from "Private Lives", "Hamlet", "Checkmate", and "A Man for All Seasons". When forced to improvise a soliloquy in the "Hamlet" scene, George tells the audience that he was raised in a Catholic school and was interested in joining a monastery but they told him to wait until he was older. When he was older, however,
Krapp's Last Tape déclassé but still indubitably Irish and thus ideally fitted for the performance of Beckett ... As an actor, he had the good sense to see that one played Beckett for the weight and mood of the words and the situation without bothering about the ultimate philosophical import. The Canadian actor Donald Davis played Krapp in the North American premiere production of "Krapp's Last Tape". "The New York Times" reported that Davis "won an Obie Award in 1960 for his performance as the lonely, solitary Krapp, playing the tapes of his life and re-experiencing decades of regret." Later, "Krapp's Last Tape,"