Not I, Footfalls, Rockaby by Samuel Beckett, Royal Court, review The first piece, Not I, is the most startling. All we see is the actress's mouth, which is spot-lit eight feet above the stage. Even the theatre's exit lights are extinguished and the darkness is "Bible black" in Dylan Thomas's phrase, so that you can't see the hand in front of your face, just the moving lips as the speaker gabbles fragments of memory filled with loneliness, fear and the absence of love. There is an extraordinary moment as she describes standing bereft and bewildered in a supermarket, and the speaker has a strange terror of referring to herself in the first person, always saying "she" rather than "I" as if intent on distancing herself from her own misery. She begs for it all to stop, a prayer that seems to have been answered at the play's end. In the second piece, Footfalls, a middle-aged woman walks up and down a corridor outside her mother's sickroom, dressed in an old ball gown and putting one in mind of a troubled ghost. The unseen mother, whose voice we hear, describes the utter loneliness of her daughter's life, and commiserates with her that she has so many more years to endure. In the final piece, Rockaby, the actress sits in a rocking chair, fruitlessly seeking "another living soul" and convinced that it is "time she stopped." Sometimes she speaks out loud, sometimes we seem to be eavesdropping on her thoughts with the help of a recorded tape of her voice. When she finally rocks herself to death, Beckett has a sour epitaph on the existence she leaves behind: "F--- life." All of which sounds deeply gloomy, but the emotional truth of Dwan's performance and the compassion and empathy of Beckett's writing ensure that Walter Asmus's production is beautiful and moving as well as chilling. Indeed you leave these searching plays feeling unexpectedly elated, for a walk through the night can be invigorating as well as scary. Tickets are sold out at the Royal Court but production transfers to the Duchess, Feb 3-15. Tickets 020 7565 5000; royalcourttheatre.com