Five short Beckett plays are great fun for enthusiasts - but not for anyone else Fragments Young Vic, London SE1

Fragments is appropriately named. What's on offer is a bit of Samuel Beckett, a smidgen of the director Peter Brook and a flash of great acting from Kathryn Hunter. Each of them is a master of his or her art. But apart from one episode, the evening amounts to really nothing more than a gesture. As such, watching it is a rather frustrating experience.

What we have are five short plays by Beckett. The second one, Rockaby, is extremely well known - a masterpiece, even. It is performed with astonishing power by Hunter, a tiny woman with a huge voice. She is seated on a chair. That's all there is on stage. Her body seems shrunken and vulnerable; her eyes dart, peeping out over her nose. She describes her day, telling us how she looks through her window at the windows of the buildings opposite her. Then she describes the same thing again. And again. And again. Beckett's repetitive language and Hunter's studied minimalism of movement somehow allow every one of her phrases to become enormous.

Brook, who once wrote a book called The Empty Space, manages to fill this one with a wholly charged atmosphere. Hunter's folded hands and quietly paired feet bring a sense of tense anticipation. Her husky voice goes on and on, intoning a mantra. We humans do the same things over and over again every day, never changing, going through our daily round, hoping that someone from the building opposite will communicate with us, until we die. That's it. That's the point of life. Well, that's Beckett for you: ever the optimist.

That's not to say the evening is devoid of laughs. In the third playlet of the night, Act Without Words II, Jos Houben and Marcello Magni, the two other actors in the evening, clamber into giant white bags. A white pointer descends from the rafters and pokes Magni in his bag. He gets out, sad-faced, and does a bit of clowning around with his clothes. There is muted laughter from the stalls, then he gets back in his bag. The pointer moves over and pokes Houben to get out of his bag. He gets out and does exactly the same thing, except he does it with a spring in his step, and a smile. Then he gets back in his bag. By this juncture the Beckett enthusiasts in the audience are falling about with hysterics. The rest of us are smiling faintly.

Both Houben and Magni are extremely fine actors, but there just isn't enough substance in the piece for them to grab on to. "Let it sweep over you," said my companion. Well, maybe, but I don't want to let any piece of theatre sweep over me. I want to focus on it, take it in and contemplate it. Sadly, there wasn't much to focus on here, even if it was the dream ticket of Samuel Beckett directed by Peter Brook.

You can see why the production, which has transferred from Brook's Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, was such an enticing one for the company. Brook, now an old man, has such unchallenged stature in the theatre world that the Young Vic programme - in all sincerity, it appears - actually compares him to God. Directing Beckett is a challenge, but doing five snippets of work that take just over an hour to complete is hardly akin to the 13-hour Mahabharata which he produced in Glasgow 20 years ago, or even Sizwe Banzi is Dead, which Brook brought to the Barbican in May this year.

And while Rockaby is a great and sober piece of work, it has been inserted into the other plays rather like a delicious slice of cheese popped into an otherwise bland sandwich. Or a baguette. The remaining playlets are incidental beyond measure; one has Houben and Magni as disabled beggars, one lame and one blind, and another has all three actors as old women in hats and coats, sitting on a park bench, swapping and gasping over a piece of gossip. It is quite good observational acting, if somewhat redolent of Little Britain. The Beckett enthusiasts in the audience collapse over this as well. Perhaps they are all Matt Lucas fans in disguise.

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