Like several of his existentialist contemporaries (e.g., Ionesco, Genet, and Sarte), Samuel Beckett’s dramas use absurdism as a means of indicting modern society. Writing during the aftermath of two World Wars and the corresponding developments of industrialized society, totalitarianism, and the nation state, these absurdist dramatists - though indebted to the earlier works of writers such as Jarry, Artaud, Grabbe, Kafka, and Büchner, among others - created a new form that demonstrated modernity’s senselessness through a combination of surrealism, satire, and futurism towards rendering a theatrical affect that is as humorous as it is bizarre, as comic as it could be tragic. Happy Days. BAM. January 2008. Photo: Richard TermineBeckett’s 1961 modern classic Happy Days is such a piece, featuring its protagonist, the indomitable Winnie, buried up to her breasts and later her neck in sand, in the middle of a vast wasteland without any sign of life around her except her miserably listless husband, who resides in a nearby ditch and wiles away the day aimlessly grunting, looking at pornographic photos, and reading the same outdated newspaper. Similar to other Beckett dramas, the action is spare, the setting is minimalist, the plot is circular, and his rich language and precise stage directions give rise to an irrational circumstance that reinforces an existentialist view suggesting an overarching meaninglessness to humankind. However, in contrast to some of his other texts, Happy Days operates on a variety of stylistic levels, as it combines the austerity of Endgame with the humor of Waiting for Godot to offer a drama altogether profound, poignant, funny, and frightening. Given its dramaturgical complexity, and moreover, the rigorous demands challenging the actress playing Winnie - she is after all buried throughout the production and can only move her arms - Happy Days is particularly difficult to pull off, which most likely explains why it is so rarely produced. Thankfully, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s recent booking of the play under Deborah Warner’s direction, with the acclaimed Fiona Shaw as Winnie, proves to be a smashing success. 

Warner and Shaw have effectively collaborated on past projects, including a stage adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, a cross-gendered interpretation of Richard II, and a critically acclaimed version of Euripides’s Medea - produced at BAM in 2002.  Their accomplishment with Happy Days should be considered among their most notable achievements. Given the play’s extraordinary challenges, the mere fact that the current BAM production keeps the audience fully engaged for ninety minutes spread out over a pair of acts indicates this production’s merit. A resounding standing ovation greeted the curtain call. While I admit a standing ovation is hardly a gauge for criticizing a theatrical work, because a BAM audience generally consists of regular theatregoers who are more critically oriented than the average Broadway spectator per se, and are therefore less inclined to cursorily rise to their feet at the event’s conclusion, the fact that they did so on behalf of Happy Days is testament to the production’s achievement.

Happy Days. BAM. January 2008. Photo: Richard Termine

Buried in a mound of rubble that suggests the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, Ms. Shaw is visually dwarfed by Tom Pye’s arresting setting, yet she takes complete command of the evening right from her very first utterance: “Another heavenly day!” Indeed, Shaw’s Winnie is a rich combination of optimism, glee, humor, and pathos.  Despite her obvious predicament - she’s permanently stuck in the dirt in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland - Winnie never fails to maintain a positive and hopeful outlook on life, “Not a day goes by without some blessing;” a trait that can be readily juxtaposed against her pathetic counterpart, Willie (Tim Potter), who is perennially asleep to the world, perhaps most clearly indicated by his ignorance of a nearby bomb explosion that rocks the entire mountain of rubble. In directly addressing the audience - a convention used throughout the evening - Winnie refers to her husband as “semi-alert,” a condition besetting nearly all of us in modern/postmodern society.  Of course, the irony in having such a comment from a woman eternally buried is unmistakable. Winnie finds joy and entertainment in the simplest of actions: filing her nails, opening her umbrella, applying makeup, gazing through a magnifying glass, or dialoguing with the audience in such a way that our constant laughter and occasional sighs of approval converse with her speaking, which is aptly executed by the remarkably skilled Shaw. Indeed, Shaw’s command of Beckett’s difficult language easily reminds one that she is among Western society’s most gifted stage actresses. 

In conjunction with Shaw’s stellar performance, Warner’s direction unearths - so to speak—the contradictory essence of Beckett’s piece. This Happy Days is a rich combination of comedy and tragedy, in which humor and irony serve as a fitting complement to its overarching bleakness. Despite the text’s absurdity, Shaw manages to find the humanity that Beckett has infused in Winnie, as she avoids the role’s pitfall of becoming generally morose, and instead textures her characterization with a poignant combination of hope and despair. Perhaps this dialectic is best demonstrated in the evening’s penultimate moment when Willie, clad in a wrinkled tuxedo shirt, dirtied top hat, and tattered trousers struggles to climb the rubble to join Winnie, who serenades him with a lullaby, “You love me so…” Shortly thereafter, the lights come down on an extraordinary night of theatre.  

© Electronic Communications from the International Brecht Society: ECIBS 36.1 (Winter 2008)