Word: beckett
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...largely a problem of interpretation. Director George Hamlin, a leading figure in the drama center's rise to regional prominence, doesn't ever really do very much with the relationship between Winnie and Willie, part of a more general and more alarming failure to allow the questions raised by Beckett to come out in any clear light...
Happy Days, with only one genuine character and no plot to speak of, is Beckett's most theatrically difficult full-length play. It opened in New York in 1961 and closed after only a half-month's run. Since that time performing groups have shied away from it, opting instead for the more popular and more stylized Waiting for Godot. The Harvard Summer School Repertory Theater, which has been ambitious in its undertakings all season long, has taken up the challenge of putting on a dramatically successful Happy Days, and the effort--while admirable--isn't all that exciting...
...Beckett's two-act play is a highly abstracted vision of existence and of an enduring human spirit. The major character is an aging and chatty woman named Winnie who is buried, first up to her waist and later up to her neck, in a mound of sand. In spite of her tortuous condition Winnie maintains a constant banter of praise for her life, always hitting upon one thing or another that is "wonderful" about her circumstances. Her day, the start of which is signaled by a mysterious bell, is begun with a prayer, almost too ironical, "to a world...
...Winnie has about 95 per cent of the play's lines (most of Willie's lines are a series of grunts), the couple are co-equal as characters, and the contrast between them is anything but insignificant. Each character presents alternative ways of facing this vale of tears, and Beckett's play only begins to make sense as an exploration of the human condition when the counterpoint of their relationship is fully established...
Happy Days is a play with much comic potential, and for the most part Hamlin and Hamlin realize the play's essential comic value. Beckett, who was 54 when he wrote the script, also has some valuable things to say about the terror of aging, and the Loeb production makes these statements for Beckett with great eloquence...