Review: HAPPY DAYS, Birmingham Rep - Tour

Photo credit: Marcin Lewandowski

“I have a strange feeling someone is watching me” claims Winnie (played by the multi-talented Siobhan McSweeney). Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days allows us to watch her for approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes (including interval). Happy Days is essentially a monologue spoken by the observational Winnie, with occasional interjections from her seemingly subdued husband and dependant Willie (played by Howard Teale). Dripping in subtle complexity and societal expectations, Beckett’s play tries its hardest to represent the modern woman. The play itself was written in 1960 and was met with mostly positive reviews. In Happy Days, Beckett seeks to represent a married couple in the 1960s in what feels like a post-apocalyptic world.

We meet Winnie, who is up to her waist in sand with only a bag of ‘essentials’ (including a gun) and her unstoppable optimism. Despite the bleak situation and the lack of her husband’s interest or help, Winnie maintains that this “will be a happy day!” She lives in a deluge of never-ending light with only an umbrella for shade, which soon sets alight from the blazing sun. Woken by a bell and then informed to sleep by a bell, in an unstoppable routine of emptiness. Throughout the play, you begin to notice the many desiccated umbrellas placed on the sand and realise that Winnie is simply repeating the same day over and over again, with her husband quietly in tow. He does occasionally read the newspaper to her and place his hat on his head, askew, to protect himself from the blazing heat. In the second half, Winnie is then up to her neck in sand, but this still doesn’t appear to flail her.

The play itself makes Pinter look fast. The silence of the piece is somewhat deafening and the lack of movement combined makes for a slow ride. Beckett, known for his absurdist works, displays a woman slowly dying with a kind of unstoppable buoyancy and her husband crawling alongside her. The second half is stronger, displaying the love and affection between the couple, as well as their absurdities.

Both actors throughout are superb in their respective roles. Siobhan McSweeney carries the show with utmost professionalism and the set spikes a genuine curiosity and gasps from the audience. However, the slow pace and dated analogy leaves this show where it just may belong, in the past.

** Two stars

Reviewed by: Sophie Eaton

Happy Days plays at Birmingham Rep until 1 July, with further information here.