NO ONE WOULD ever accuse Samuel Beckett of being too accessible. In both his prose and his plays, the master of minimalist misery cut language so finely that at times, like the proverbial slice of thin-sliced bread, it seems to only have one side. This leads to repetition of image, idea, and words that to a receptive ear creates a meditative mantra of great beauty, sounding like the sea in Arnold’s “Dover Beach”: the “turbid ebb and flow of human misery.”

To an unreceptive ear, it can be the aural equivalent of watching paint dry.

Texts for Nothing

A Contemporary Theater till September 26

When Joseph Chaikin, teacher, writer, director, actor, and founder of New York’s legendary Living Theater, asked Beckett for permission to adapt his prose piece Texts for Nothing for the stage, he received the great man’s blessing, along with notes about an audio tape of his performance that Chaikin had sent the author. That tape, or one much like it, plays a key role in Chaikin’s current performance of the piece, in ACT’s Bullitt Cabaret for a very limited run.

Tapes from the past, of course, are redolent of Beckett’s masterwork Krapp’s Last Tape, in which a man sorts through his memories and his life via a collection of audio tapes. But in this case the sound of the younger Chaikin carries a personal poignancy. The artist suffered a massive stroke 15 years ago, and now speaks with tremendous difficulty as a result of the subsequent aphasia. In another context, with another piece, this performance would be sad, or unwatchable, or even ridiculous, but Texts for Nothing, like much of Beckett’s writing, is in large part about the struggle of words to wrest meaning from silence. The performer’s condition furnishes the text with a built-in conflict that not only seems suited to the piece but renders it more compelling.

It’s impossible to know the story of Chaikin’s battle to overcome his condition and not be moved by this heroic effort that transcends the expectations of normal theater. But it’s also an extreme challenge for the audience, as it strives to glean the meaning of this cruelly obscure text from an actor who performs at the whim of his debilitation. Words are garbled, stuttered, and take flight in strange intonations, and relief is only occasionally available, in the interludes in which the performer’s voice from the past is heard. Precise, pared to the dry bone, and certainly not for all audiences, this is a fascinating, near-indescribable experience of text and meta-text made one.