Beckett fans are in for a treat this month with the staging of “Vain Reasonings”, an evening of four short plays by the author of Waiting for Godot, that have never been staged in Malta before.

Catastrophe is one of Beckett’s last plays. It is about an autocratic director (played by Ray Calleja) and his female assistant (Clare Agius) who put the “final touches to the last scene of some kind of dramatic presentation,” which consists entirely of a man (The Protagonist – Kevin Attard) standing still onstage, and being moulded into shape. The rehearsal is followed by an actual performance – but there is a twist at the end, a sting in the tail.

Not I has a deceptively simple narrative: an old woman recounting her life. Born pre-maturely and abandoned by her parents, she has never known love or affection. She retreats into herself, finding it impossible to communicate with anyone, except for instances where, losing control of herself, words flow in an unstoppable stream, recounting the experience of the homeless woman. Beckett, in an act of pure genius, reduces all stage elements to a “Mouth” (played by Leigh-Anne Abela).

Ohio Impromptu (the only play in the evening’s set to have been staged in Malta before) is a poetic rendering of a man’s need to come to terms with the loss of a loved one. A reader (Victor Debono) reads from a diary while a listener (Kevin Attard) tries to come to terms with his past.

Rockaby, a short one-woman play, portrays the last moments in the life of an old woman, sitting in a rocking chair. When Billie Whitelaw, Beckett’s favourite actress, performed the piece she said: “I feel very, very lonely in that chair.”

Director Michael Fenech says he chose the plays for the challenge they present in staging, and also because they present Beckett’s darkly poetic theatre as a “wonderful” music.

“Vain Reasonings – Four short works by Beckett” will be performed at the Theatre in the Round at St James Cavalier for Creativity on 11, 12, 13 May at 8pm. The plays are directed by Michael Fenech. Booking from St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity.