First Samuel Beckett and then his estate have long held what Supreme Court justices like to call “originalist” views about staging his works: If the Founding Father didn’t say to do it, don’t do it. This runs counter to the impulses of many directors, who traditionally have taken creative liberties at their peril. JoAnne Akalaitis joined these ranks in 1984 when her regional mounting of “Endgame,” set in an abandoned subway station, was nearly derailed; Beckett ultimately allowed it to be performed, but not without a disclaimer in the program.

With one notable and unfortunate exception, Ms. Akalaitis basically toes the line with “Beckett Shorts,” her first return to the playwright’s works since then. The musical contributions of her husband, Philip Glass, are once again largely incidental, and her four-member cast — led by the dance legend Mikhail Baryshnikov — rarely deviates from Beckett’s meticulous stage directions. But even as their actions play it straight, Ms. Akalaitis has overlaid two of the four plays with unnecessary and intrusive video footage. If you ever wondered what it would look like to see Samuel Beckett, as opposed to, say, Stephon Marbury, on a Jumbotron screen, this is your chance.

In the first of the evening’s four playlets, “Act Without Words I,” Mr. Baryshnikov joins the likes of Bill Irwin and Buster Keaton in imbuing Beckett’s doom-laden yet oddly sprightly shorter works with a comprehensive and emotionally inclusive physical vocabulary. As his unnamed wayfarer stumbles over Alexander Brodsky’s sand-covered set, slowly mastering the collection of items (scissors, colored blocks, a climbing rope) that emerge from the sky at the bidding of an unseen whistler, Mr. Baryshnikov combines a child’s wary inquisitiveness with a bone-weary fatalism. Not even Mirit Tal’s distracting projections, which use real-time digital manipulation to fracture Mr. Baryshnikov’s hesitant actions, can pull focus from his infectious curiosity.

While this work spotlights the all-consuming difficulties of navigating the most mundane tasks, “Act Without Words II” reduces life to those poignantly rudimentary actions. Two men (Mr. Baryshnikov and David Neumann) take turns emerging from sacks and completing a heavily ritualized series of actions, spurred by a long, wheeled arrow — Beckett called it a “goad” — that emerges from offstage to prod their respective sacks. (Mr. Glass has composed an almost cartoonishly ominous vamp that accompanies each appearance of the goad. While much of the play’s publicity has centered on Mr. Glass’s involvement, his contributions are largely confined to these snippets, and a hurdy-gurdyish melody before the play begins.)

The rhythmically formidable Mr. Neumann, himself an acclaimed figure in contemporary dance, incorporates a few frisky

flourishes into his complementary, more agitated daily routine. (After consulting his wristwatch no fewer than 11 times, each time with an identical snap of the wrist, he jauntily tosses the watch into his coat pocket.) The contrast between the methodical elder — Mr. Baryshnikov is 59 — and the hopped-up junior casts an ingratiating and not inappropriate light onto the way two generations of dancers navigate the same world. The day may begin and end the same way for all, but the two men’s actions speak volumes about their willingness and ability to pass the hours in between.

But while Mr. Neumann proves a welcome addition to “Beckett Shorts,” Bill Camp meets with little success in the following piece, “Rough for Theatre I.” For the first time in more than a dozen performances of his that I’ve seen (including a fascinating Beckett triple bill at the 92nd Street Y last spring), Mr. Camp rings false here. Playing a wheelchair-bound misanthrope opposite Mr. Baryshnikov’s blind beggar, he falls back repeatedly on his deliciously weathered voice and a handful of oddly declamatory hand signals. The piece, which went unpublished and unproduced for almost two decades, has long been considered a lesser cousin to the similarly apocalyptic pairings in “Waiting for Godot” and especially “Endgame”; this strained rendition, which incorporates a decidedly menacing coda to Beckett’s ambiguous ending, does little to shake that impression.

Ms. Akalaitis does buck expectations with “Eh Joe,” the final and most emotionally resonant of the four pieces in “Beckett Shorts.” Beckett’s instructions to director Alan Schneider regarding this television play included the phrase “Eyes remember,” and Mr. Baryshnikov delivers on this instruction via a hypnotic — and utterly silent — depiction of the “mounting tension of listening.” (Mr. Baryshnikov speaks only in “Rough for Theatre I,” and while his vocal delivery is inevitably overshadowed by his physical prowess, his weary take on the beggar holds its own alongside Mr. Camp.)

“Eh Joe” originally consisted almost entirely of one shot — the television camera zooms in closer and closer on Joe’s impassive face as an unseen female voice lambastes “that penny farthing hell you call your mind.” Ms. Akalaitis splits the difference here: Karen Kandel delivers the fragmented monologue directly toward a silent Mr. Baryshnikov, while the entire expanse of the stage is simultaneously given over to a prerecorded (though exquisitely performed) film of the actor.

The real-life Baryshnikov can be seen through the gauzy screen, but as the camera moves toward Jumbotron Joe’s face, in keeping with (although much more speedily than) Beckett’s printed directions, the onstage Joe shrinks in stature. Ms. Akalaitis virtually guarantees that her leading performer — or at least the actual, live iteration of him — becomes increasingly extraneous.

Granted, translating a TV piece to the stage comes with its own challenges, and access to the tiniest shifts in Joe’s gaze is an essential part of “Eh Joe.” But with so many exceptional Beckett playlets available, why opt for this one if the primary goal is to ape the original cinematography? And despite a plush rendition of the text by Ms. Kandel, little is gained by having her crawl onto the ground and enact the suicide attempt in the final passage.

The fidgety “Act Without Words I” video is more distracting, but it’s the “Eh Joe” footage that finally forces the question: Who exactly does Ms. Akalaitis feel needs the visual assistance? Mikhail Baryshnikov? Samuel Beckett? The presumably media-starved audience? Eyes may remember, but by treating a 188-seat off-Broadway theater like Madison Square Garden, Ms. Akalaitis makes it too easy for the other senses to forget.

Until January 20 (79 E. 4th St., between Second Avenue and Bowery, 212-239-6200).