The Theater: In the Mind's I

ACT WITHOUT WORDS KRAPP'S LAST TAPE HAPPY DAYS NOT! by SAMUEL BECKETT

The characters in Samuel Beckett's plays are continually drawing their next-to-last breath of life. Thus it is fitting that three old playlets of his—Act Without Words (1957), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), Happy Days (1961)—and one new one, Not I, are currently on view at the Forum, little sister to the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Manhattan's Lincoln Center. Thanks to a fiscally inept board of directors, the Forum is drawing its last foreseeable breath with the Beckett quartet.

Beckett's terrain is the skull;...