Beckett Shorts

Scarcely could the stark, isolating vision of Samuel Beckett have been given a more graphic treatment than in the RSC's installation-like presentation, where the audience is quietly guided, in almost total darkness, between the separate spaces in which Footfalls, Rockaby and Not I are staged.

In these monologues written for women, director Katie Mitchell relentlessly focuses attention ever more acutely on, first, a middle-aged woman who has not ventured into the light of day since girlhood; an elderly, once-grande dame rocking away her last days at her window; and, finally, a disembodied voice grotesquely, hysterically forcing itself from the only visible element, the vocal orifice itself. The crushingly cyclical nature of the plays is given voices of such controlled intensity and concentrated introspection by Juliet Stevenson - in Footfalls and Not I - and Debra Gillett in Rockaby that the audience is made to feel like voyeuristic intruders preying on private emotions.

In Not I, we are joined by the lofty, hooded figure of the silent Auditor, who watches and listens impassively as Stevenson's remarkable outburst takes on a hallucinatory life of its own. One's instinctive imperative, as her gibbering mouth hushes to a whisper, is to walk quietly away, hug the illusion to oneself, share it with no-one.

The RSC's programme of Beckett Shorts continues until Saturday. Booking on Belfast 665577.