Went to see Beckett Shorts a few weeks ago at The New York Theatre Workshop and found everything about it pretty invigorating. Starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and directed by Mabou Mines founder JoAnne Akalaitis, the evening featured an omnibus of four short plays by Samuel Beckett. The set design was appropriately minimal, cleansing the mind's palette with floor-to-ceiling Venetian blinds and a carpet of white powder. The blinds allowed props to fly in and out from all directions like literalized deus ex machina. Ghostly video monitors and diaphanous scrims were deployed with understated precision. The plays themselves seemed at once fragmentary and complete, tempering despair with flashes of humor and humanism. Arranged chronologically, these works invited us to trace a trajectory from pure movement (Act Without Words I) to near stasis (Eh Joe), with intimations of suicide and violence nipping at the edges of the action.

The dour Sisyphean slapstick Act Without Words I found a solo Baryshnikov investing his tasks with a physical vigor and grace that nearly one-upped the hopelessness of the situation. Act Without Words II was pointedly rote and schematic, a slow motion existential Looney Tunes Moebius Strip of a silent film punctuated by the mock urgency of Philip Glass’ music. The only dialogue-driven piece, Rough For Theatre I featured a spastic-fantastic Bill Camp as a crippled hobo trading barbs with Baryshnikov as a blind hobo. In typical Beckett fashion, madcap hijinks ensue, ziggurats of inspired nonsense are built and demolished before our eyes and ears.

An adaptation of the teleplay Eh Joe finished off the night by perversely squeezing Baryshnikov into a state of rabid stillness. Via video projection, the actor’s iconic face filled the room in massive close-up while a not-quite-disembodied voice spun a tale of human frailty that was disarmingly hot blooded, yet tightly controlled. Unlike the other plays, Eh Joe was set almost entirely within the interior landscape of the psyche. The choice to depict the voice on stage as a flesh and blood woman was both distracting and bold, forcing the audience to divide their attentions, yet making legible what Beckett left out. I left the theater in a rare state of elation.

Here are some reviews in the NY Times and Variety.