Samuel Beckett is not for everyone. The Irish Nobel Prize winner was a proud iconoclast who stubbornly resisted such conventions of theater as plot, linear exposition, and even movement. But for those who are willing to tamp down their expectations and to go on a different sort of journey in the dark, the rewards can be considerable. Director Ciarán O’Reilly has gathered three short plays that exemplify the playwright’s playfulness with the forms of theatermaking in a one-act stew dubbed Beckett Briefs, which opened Sunday at the Irish Repertory Theatre.

We begin with the monologue Not I performed with crisp alacrity by actress Sarah Street — or, more accurately, by Street’s rouge-lipped mouth, which alone is illuminated roughly eight feet above the stage in otherwise-pitch darkness (lighting by Michael Gottlieb). Street’s mouth unleashes an almost unbroken torrent of verbiage that doesn’t so much follow a stream of consciousness but juts in sudden turns down new runnels and tributaries with no promise of arriving at any destination in particular. Gradually, we gather that the speaker is an elderly woman who’s been mostly mute since she was abandoned by her parents at birth, and has lived a dull life interrupted by brief moments of incident (“that time in court”) and reflections on bigger questions (“she was being punished… for her sins”). Phrases repeat themselves in a poetic echo that suggests coherence, or at least intentionality, while never settling into concrete meaning. The effect is of overhearing the mutterings of a homeless woman we might encounter on the sidewalk — and who emerges as an empathetic figure despite remaining forever faceless.

Street returns moments later in Play, one prong of a love triangle that includes her character’s married lover (Roger Dominic Casey) and his wife (Kate Forbes). They’re represented as heads sticking out of funeral urns whose decorative patterns continues onto their costumes and facial makeup (designed by Orla Long). Each has their face illuminated by a roving spotlight as they deliver their portion of three overlapping monologues defending their roles in a tortured romance. Despite the obvious stylistic similarities to Not I, there’s a smidge more plot to be gleaned here — though it’s rendered in a three-part chorus and hits some pretty obvious story beats: Wife catches husband cheating, threatens suicide, confronts mistress; husband gives up his lover, regrets that decision, tries to return to his newer woman but finds that impossible too. It’s a tale of thwarted love that’s as old as time, and Beckett leans into that idea in his stylized approach, treating his characters as literal objects who talk over each other and even repeat their lines as if stuck on a loop.

Some may find this kind of theatrical experimentation tedious — but O’Reilly’s production benefits from the relatively short running time as well as a first-rate cast able to deliver pages of dialogue at a breathtaking clip. He saves the silences for the final playlet, Krapp’s Last Tape, which F. Murray Abraham delivers with the elegiac presence of an aging circus clown. There’s a bit of the silent-era comedian about this geriatric man puttering about his study in his slippers, caressing a banana he’s unearthed in a drawer (improbably still ripe), and digging up old reel-to-reel tapes that he recorded on previous birthdays to mark the passage of another year. This is a memory play that’s cleverly constructed so that our hero can provide a real-time commentary track on aural flashbacks to his past — as we watch Abraham scoff and sigh and talk back to his younger self expounding (on tape) about his latest love affair or professional triumph as a litterateur.

When it comes time to record a new track, Abraham’s Krapp finds himself at a loss for anything positive to say. “Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that,” he begins. His 69th year proved no more promising: disappointing sales for his most recently published book, a couple flings with a “bony old ghost of a whore,” a visit to Vespers services in church where he “went to sleep and fell off the pew.” Abraham brings a grounded physicality to the role, tossing items from his desk and then stumbling over and around them to retrieve a bottle of celebratory (or compensatory) booze. His wide, deep-set eyes betray not only a man of set opinions but also reveal the very moment when the inner fire that might drive him to change his outlook dims into bleak resignation. His final confession — “Perhaps my best years are gone…. But I wouldn’t want them back” — lands like a gut punch, but one delivered without much energy. A shot that topples you over without knocking you clear across the room can still be fatal.

BECKETT BRIEFS
Irish Repertory Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 80 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through March 9