Samuel Beckett: Collected Shorter Plays (Faber & Faber, £11.99 in UK)

Beckett's major plays are already available in a Faber paperback, but in his later years of fame he wrote many shorter works, …

Beckett's major plays are already available in a Faber paperback, but in his later years of fame he wrote many shorter works, some of which seem to have been little more than verbal experiments (though his close followers probably will not agree; for them he never nods). Several were written originally for radio, of which the most substantial are probably All That Fall (a masterpiece of its kind) and Embers, both with a suburban Dublin setting. Inevitably, Krapp's Last Tape is included and it is interesting to note that in print it takes up a mere nine pages. Cascando is, frankly, pretentious and rather insubstantial, while Eh Joe is a brief stream-of-consciousness piece; The Old Tune is an adaptation of a work by Robert Pinget.

Diagrams are included in some of the stage directions.