Happy Days theatre review: Poignantly riveting
Optimism battles despair in a two-hander which has a formidable human spirit fighting for the upper hand
Samuel Beckett was notoriously strict in his staging edicts, which makes it all the more remarkable how much room for interpretation practitioners have found in the Irish writer’s works for the theatre. Most striking of all is his 1961 play Happy Days, whose indomitable heroine, Winnie, is discovered buried in sand, at first up to the waist, and in the second act, all the way to the neck. No production is ever the same.
In Roxana Silbert’s powerful staging for Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Winnie’s musings take place against the backdrop of a dazzling seascape, designed by Emma Bailey, with the protagonist stranded in the midst of a sand dune that appears to have poured out through a huge tear in the sky. Siobhan Redmond, known for her versatility as a stage actor in comic and dramatic roles as well as her distinctively expressive face, is ideally cast, striking the right combination of humour and pathos as Winnie awakens and embarks on her daily routine, combing her hair and applying make-up, defiant and determined, even if at times the cracks begin to show.
In support, Forbes Masson makes for the perfect foil as Winnie’s husband, Willie, inarticulate but more mobile than Winnie, amused and titillated by end-of-the-pier postcards, but with vestiges of more romantic leanings. Both are especially poignant in the play’s second half, when Winnie’s optimism repeatedly faces off against despair. As an examination of the indignity of ageing and the steadfast human spirit, Silbert’s production makes for an interesting companion piece to Pitlochry’s production of Lear, staged earlier in the year with Maureen Beattie.
Redmond has an enviable facility for the rhythms of Beckett’s writing (at times her interpretation is closer to singing than speech). Towards the end, we become riveted and strangely comforted by Winnie’s raging against the dying of the light. Her memory is unreliable (‘what is that unforgettable line?’) and she can’t move, but there is consolation in still seeing the beauty of the sky.
Happy Days, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, until Saturday 10 October; picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.