FringeReview UK 2024
Happy Days
Theatre Collection London
Genre: Absurd Theatre, classical, European Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, Short Plays, Theatre, Translation
Venue: Arcola Theatre, Studio 2
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Whip-through-Winnie? The Theatre Collection London’s production of Beckett’s Happy Days arrives for a brief run at the Arcola Theatre, Studio 2 till December 14th. Directed with lighting and sound design by Victor Sobchak, it then plays at the Etcetera Theatre 28th-31st January 2025.
I’ve never seen a Winnie more ordinary, one without those strange transcendental inflections. Catherine Humphrys isn’t flat: she rises to anguish, though it’s one of realism. I’m still not quite sure what’s been removed. But I’m very glad I’ve seen it.
Review
Whip-through-Winnie? The Theatre Collection London’s production of Beckett’s Happy Days arrives for a brief run at the Arcola Theatre, Studio 2 till December 14th. Directed with lighting and sound design by Victor Sobchak, it then plays at the Etcetera Theatre 28th-31st January 2025.
Beckett’s 1961 absurdist drama which Billie Whitelaw made her own, then more recently Juliet Stevenson in 2012, centres on a middle-aged woman gradually immobilised. First up to her waist, then neck, as she flickers through daily rituals to get her through. Outside her mound, Willie her ineffectual husband exists to bring permission but also structure to her life. His scrabbles, shouts and sudden breakings into musical hall or scurrying on all fours reassure Winnie, but cannot physically reach her. That’s despite the many toe-holds. Freya Mallia adapts a landfill site from a design by Tracey Collier. There’s bits of brand-recognition sticking out.
This production with Winnie (Catherine Humphrys) and Willie (Chris Diacopolous) interrogates cultural roles: women remaining in their place, seeking permission, static and unable to function; save in an almost robotic smile of mindless tasks around teeth and lipstick. Keeping appearances is the point. “Another heavenly day.” Here too death is broached as an end. Though in Beckett the horizon recedes further and further. Still, there’s only so far you can be buried and still breathe.
Winnie is meant to be an attractive “preferably blonde’ woman around 50. Role-play might be interrupted by hauling a gun out of a handbag. But Chekhovian convention isn’t followed. It (spoiler) never goes off. Wine must “learn to talk alone, I mean by that to myself, the wilderness.”
Before absurdism, comes the absurdities of timing. Happy Days lasts between two hours and two hours fifteen, often including an interval since it’s in two unequal acts. Billed as lasting straight through at 95-100 minutes, it was estimated by Front of House to come in at 85-90 by the time I got there for the first performance. It’s fair to say FOH looked faintly shellshocked and asked if we were emerging from Happy Days or the interval of a comedy in Studio 1. They picked up comms and started radioing. I wasn’t surprised. This Happy Days lasts around 62 minutes and I kept looking back. Was everyone emerging? Had some of us missed something? No. the actors took bows. We applauded. I reflected my journey from the National Theatre had taken longer.
But the performance is the thing, and there’s ready reasons you should see this: not least getting Beckett at an exhilarating pace that seems timeless and never forced. It readily answers Beckett’s call for a “pathetic unsuccessful realism.. pantomime….laughably earnest.” Riffling through 31 pages of text it seems intact, though there’s moments I don’t recall. And Beckett’s directions are being followed. For instance Becket refers to Reynolds’ Weekly. Willie incongruously wields a Financial Times. Perhaps because both use, or used pink paper.
This couple approach the laughably earnest where, as in some previous productions one also glimpses the numinous weird horizon: in Studio 2 lighting and intimacy are pitiless. Not even the mound affords much shelter, still less the umbrella which seems set ablaze in a shaft of red lighting. Both Humphrys and Diacopolous bring a deadpan ordinariness, a middle-aged couple with none of that bleak-struck quality that might deliver lines like “What a curse, mobility.”
It’s true the couple can no longer burst out of their allotted roles, the male gaze or overhearing immobilising both from true intimacy. Its scope though is wider too, through an existential overhearing of void.
Diacopolous’ Willie speaks in a baffled bloke-ness, breaks out into a DJ and hat, dances to a burst of Lehar’s Merry Widow for Winnie. It’s where Chander von Daatselaar’s movement direction gets a rare extrovert moment.
Humphreys though makes this production what it must be, and her Winnie lightly stamps the Beckett or she would be lost in a welter of previous greats including Peggy Ashcroft. I’ve never seen a Winnie more ordinary, one without those strange transcendental inflections, one more earnest though not so laughable. It’s not that Humphrys is flat: she rises to anguish, though it’s one of realism. Not realism guyed. There’s strange pathos when Diacopolous jumps up with beret and medals, a gesture to perennial generations of veterans and war casualties. It’s certainly fresh, and properly absurd.
And silence too is pared back; though the rhythms are neither forced nor pauses clipped. It’s like Christian Morgenstern’s poem ‘The Picket Fence’, where he removes the air from round a post. “The fence stood there dumbfounded/each slat appeared with nothing round it.” I’m still not quite sure what’s been removed. But I’m very glad I’ve seen it.
Poster Design Natalie Hindcock from Image by Catherine Humphrys.
