WORDS John Sampson
Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, directed by John Calder, is a play that centers around Winnie, an old woman trapped in a state of loneliness, who strives for companionship and acceptance. She leads her life from one day to the next focusing on making each day a “happy day”. She relies heavily on her husband Willie and uses him as a source of companionship even if it is not returned. This coupled with her obsession of a few worldly possessions is all that keeps her from falling into the wilderness that surrounds her.
Colette Kelly commands the stage with tragic desperation as Winnie. She embodies an idiosyncratic old woman on the brink of insanity, only being kept afloat by the prospect of a happy day. Some of the plays finest moments come when Winnie examines her eclectic mix of items such as her toothbrush or her carousel. Here Kelly wonderfully conveys a sense of her tragic circumstance through the joy that she finds from meaningless inanimate objects such as her lipstick. She is a woman clutching at straws, with nothing but the sound of her own voice to console. This scene is made even more poignant upon the audience’s realisation that it is a rehearsed daily routine. While Winnie muses and prophesises, Willie (played by Oengus MacNamara) is for the most part dormant. MacNamara captures the spirit of a distant and disgruntled husband who has grown tired of his wife’s incessant dialogue and finds relief from it in sleep.
The minimal set design adds to the sense of loneliness with Winnie being separated from the dark abyss by nothing more than a sprawling decrepit bed sheet that covers the stage. She is paralysed from the waist downwards by the sheet, which potently shows how there is no escape from her situation. As the second act opens Winnie has sunk down to her neck in the sheets, mirroring the decline in her state of mind. The effect of minimal sound accompaniment ensures Winnie’s voice is all that fills the auditorium, furthering the notion of her despairingly lonely state. The sharp white lighting in the fore of the stage coupled with the darkness that surrounds it, convincingly conveys the distinction between their refuge and the surrounding wilderness.
Whilst the Godot Company aims to stay as true to Beckett as possible, one of the failings of the production was its inability to hold the audience’s attention for the duration of the two hours; at times Willie is not the only one not paying attention to Winnie’s words. The second act especially seems to be drawn out and one feels that as good as Kelly is, she would have to be truly mesmerising to keep the audience engaged for the full duration. This is compounded by the static nature of the play, which relies too heavily on power of speech to keep its audience engaged.
If the play peters out in the second half, it was brought to a strong conclusion in its final scene. Calder is able to effectively capture the reconciliation of Winnie and Willie through a long gaze that signifies the first moment of intimacy between the pair. At last Winnie receives the companionship and acceptance she needs for it to be “a happy day after all”.
With The Godot Company aiming to re-imagine Beckett within Irish theatre, Calder’s production goes a long way to capturing the essence of his work, through this thorough exposé of the need for human companionship.
