STAGE REVIEW : 4 BY BECKETT: DUM-DE-DUM-DUM

Saturday night. Reviewer attends City Stage. Small theater on 4th Street near downtown. Four Samuel Beckett plays there. “Come and Go.” “Footfalls.” “A Piece of Monologue.” “What Where.”

Standard Beckett. Empty spaces. Lonely people. Talking like this. Teasing memory. More dead than alive. For instance: In “Come and Go,” three women sit. Long dresses. Straw hats hiding their faces. Like lamp shades. One says to another, “When did we last speak?” Other replies, “Let us not speak.” Silence.

Uh oh.

This silence is not golden. This silence is deadly. Women gossip. Feebly. Crushed with boredom.

Slow-motion pace. Critic thinks. “Think, pig.” Whoops! Wrong play. Critic thinks, “Beckett is high priest of nullity. So far, this production is too idolatrous. Solemn. Tedious.”

“Footfalls” ensues. Woman speaks with voice. Mother’s. Lines like, “Would you like me to reject you?” Reply: “Yes, but it is too soon.” Same tone. No expression. No flavor. Actors have fallen into Beckett trap. They don’t particularize. No tension between past and present. Woman says, “Will you never have done? Will you never have done reliving it all? It all?”

And how.

Intermission. In parking lot, summery voice of Vin Scully announces from car radio, “It’s a string of pearls between Fernando and Dwight Gooden. The Dodgers and Mets in the 10th, all zeroes.” “Just

like this production,” someone says. Gloom. Silence.

Act II: “A Piece of Monologue.” Upright utility lamp on stage. Woman in hospital gown appears. “Birth was the death of him,” she says. Dirge continues. Says things like, “Backs away from edge of night and turns east to face the wall.” And, recalling parents’ wedding, “There. Together. Sailing. Wedding day. There. Alone. Him. Alone.” Actress has flat, brassy, plaintive, housewifey voice. She says, “Nothing. Empty. Dark till first Wednesday. Always the same. Night after night. The same.”

“Tell me about it,” critic groans, inwardly.

Last play: “What Where.” Cast of characters lists Voice, bam, bom, bim, bem. Maybe this will be funny, in dry Beckett humor style. No such luck. Four young men. Skullcaps. Drab clothes. Like POWs. Orange spotlight. Walk lines, at right angles. Say, “We are the last few. It is spring. Time passes.” Occasionally talk to walls, close up. Take turns capturing each other for interrogation. Say things like, “Take him away and give him the works until he confesses.” “What should he confess?” “That he said where to him.” Rondelay of everyone giving everyone else “the works.”

Fire engine siren outside. Cry of calamity. Night and the city. Anomie. Alienation. Despair. Ballgame still scoreless. Even Dodgers getting into the act. Feel like punching Beckett.

Performance ends. Company rushes on stage. Takes bow. Dutiful applause. Summing up: line from “A Piece of Monologue” remembered, “Window gone. Hands gone. Lamp gone.”

Critic. Gone.

Joined Godot. Don’t wait up.

Performances Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., at 464 East 4th St. (213) 687-9837, through Oct. 12.