Krapp happens Devanaughn serves up a Beckett sampler BY SALLY CRAGIN
	Voices in the Dark: 3 Plays by Samuel Beckett Directed by David J. Dowling. Original music by David J. Set by Anita Fuchs. Lighting by Greg Jutkiewicz. Costumes by Sarah Friedberg. With George Saulnier III, Jason Myatt, and Brian Quint. Presented by Devanaughn Theatre at the Piano Factory through February 20.

One unfortunate legacy for some dead artists is having their work reduced to a highlight reel. In the case of Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989, a night probably doesn’t pass without Vladimir and Estragon waiting hopefully on stage in some corner of the world. Yet plenty of provocative and compelling work by this existentialist master remains, even as it’s in danger of being discussed and analyzed to death in the groves of academe rather than actually produced.

Devanaughn Theatre mounts a spirited defense against this trend with Voices in the Dark: 3 Plays by Samuel Beckett, which teams one of the standards, Krapp’s Last Tape, with lesser-known short works. The plays are presented chronologically, and in addition to their individual merits, they show how Beckett’s reductive proclivity increased as the decades passed. Voices begins with 1958’s challenging Krapp, but the unexpected treats are the 1962 radio drama Cascando, which here includes original music by David J of the Brit bands Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, and 1981’s mournful two-person Ohio Impromptu.

First, overlook the fact that George Saulnier III is a few decades too young for Krapp. Under the direction of David J. Dowling, this is a taut and measured production. And though his Krapp has too much vigor when he’s shuffling, Saulnier maintains an appropriate intensity when wrestling with his reel-to-reel tape deck — the source of both indignation and rapture for him.

We meet Krapp, in Beckett’s words, on "a late evening in the future" (an evening you suspect is repeated nightly). Krapp means to revisit treasured episodes from his earlier life, which he has conveniently archived on tape and then noted in a ledger. Since this is Beckett World, where black and white always add up to gray, the entries include "Mother at rest at last," "Slight improvement in bowel condition," and "Farewell to — love."

Greg Jutkiewicz’s lighting includes an interrogation-style hanging lamp that casts interesting shadows on the actor’s face as he sits embracing his machine; it’s perfect for the play’s Koanic lines "The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness round me I feel less alone." Anita Fuchs’s simple beige-toned set — just two angled flats, with a modest, asymmetrical dropped ceiling — is cozy and claustrophobic.

David J’s music for Cascando, a radio play presented in the dark in which we hear voices, alternately anxious and exhausted, relies heavily on a cello sawing out ascending diminished chords, all menace, yet aimless, with an unexpected addition: an undulating Slinky that brings to mind clinking coins and clanking chains. It is at times buoyantly emotional, especially alongside the poetic narrative. "Get it on, finish," says a weary male voice. "This one is the right one. . . . Finish, then stop." In a talk-back following the February 4 performance, the composer sounded positively Beckettian when he admitted he was thinking of "an M.C. Escher staircase that never ends" and that his urge was both "wanting to create — and wanting to be done with it."

Ohio Impromptu was written at the behest of the English Department of Ohio State University, which was honoring Beckett with a symposium on his 75th birthday. Two figures in dark coats and long silver wigs sit at a table, a corner between them. The Reader (Brian Quint) has a ledger open before him. He regales a Listener (Jason Myatt) with an oft-told tale, though, as he says early on, "Little is left to tell." The Listener periodically interrupts the narrative by rapping sharply on the tabletop with his knuckles — the human equivalent of the "rewind" button on Krapp’s tape recorder. The Reader shows marked patience, and though the two figures are virtually twins, there is an ocean of longing between them. The piece is more a tableau than a short play, and though Quint’s voice is limited in sonorousness, he navigates the tricky emotional terrain.

Devanaughn has done well by these snippets from the Beckett canon, the company allowing the pilot light of hope, which flickers in every Beckett work, to shine just brightly enough.