Samuel Beckett and Peter Brook: this combination should have been a contender. Yet the uniting of these two stubbornly idiosyncratic visionaries of 20th century theatre, via five Beckett shorts lasting a mere 55 minutes, is a tremendous let‑down. Beckett’s uncompromising stage poetry is almost entirely wasted, replaced instead by a lot of offputtingly mannered acting.

Rough for Theatre I, Rockaby, Act Without Words II, Neither, Come and Go distil to their very essence the themes of Beckett’s writing. There’s loneliness, of course, and doubt, as well as the bleakness and often comedy of the human condition.

Rockaby, for example, is one old woman’s haunting, haiku-like elegy for lost lives but Kathryn Hunter makes nothing of the wistful refrain “when she said/ to herself/ whom else”.

Even more frustratingly, title and stage directions are ignored, and a simple kitchen chair is perversely used instead of a rocker.

Marcello Magni and Khalifa Natour wring no more pathos out of the Endgame-esque Rough for Theatre I, and the trio combine to little effect in that tragicomic reuniting of three old friends, Come and Go, which should suggest both Godot and Coronation Street. A big disappointment.