Rockaby
By Samuel Beckett
Billie Whitelaw
Union Theatre

“This,” Billie Whitelaw announced pointing to the bright blue cover of her script folder, “is the most cheerful thing you’ll see all evening.” Maybe it was meant to be disarming to the audience but it momentarily short-circuited the possibilities of the evening by reinforcing Beckett’s popular reputation, or rather his notoriety, as a joyless nihilist who wrote those now rather old hat plays about loitering tramps and people in rubbish bins.

The …