By Jorge Casuso

April 4, 2016 -- A critic once famously said that "nothing happens twice" in Samuel Beckett's early masterpiece for the stage "Waiting for Godot."

By the time Beckett wrote the three one-woman plays that will be performed by Lisa Dwan this week at Santa Monica College's Broad Stage, the Nobel Laureate had stripped his plays even further.

In "Not I," a mouth suspended in total darkness utters a faltering, relentless stream of speech. In "Footfalls, a woman paces back and forth outside her dying mother's bedroom as the light slowly fades.

While in "Rockaby," the longest of the three works, a woman sits totally still in a rocking chair listening to her own pre-recorded voice, until the end, when the chair starts and stops rocking on its own.

"In a performance that is as spirited as it is technically flawless, Irish actress Lisa Dwan illuminates Beckett's triptych in a dazzling display of theatrical brilliance," Broad stage officials said.

"This is Beckett, performed the way that Beckett would have dreamed."

The Lisa Dwan production, which will be presented April 7 through 10 in association with ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann, has won rave reviews after its critically acclaimed, sold-out performances at London’s Royal Court Theatre and New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music.

"Lisa Dwan’s stunning performance," Terry Byrne wrote in the Boston Globe, "highlights Beckett’s extraordinary approach to theatricality.

"Stripping away all the artifice of the stage, Beckett focuses on a range of feeling, something Dwan delivers with an intensity that is never less than mesmerizing," Byrne wrote. "Dwan’s performance is unsettling and thrilling all at once."

Dwan, an Irish actress who has appeared in several feature films, performed Beckett's "Not I" in London's Battersea Arts Centre in 2005 and in 2009 in the Southbank Centre in London.

Last year, she performed on Broadway reciting a previously unpublished work by Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.

Board Stage officials offer a cautionary note for what promises to be a unique theatrical experience:

"During the performance, all lights are switched off including the Emergency Exit Lights. You will experience a total blackout. In the event of an emergency, lights will be immediately switched back on."

Theater at The Broad Stage made possible in part by a gift from Laurie and Bill Benenson. The "Beckett Trilogy" at The Broad Stage made possible in part by a gift from Linda and Michael Keston.