Happy Days review: A magnificent brutal revival of Samuel Beckett’s wasteland marriage play

Samuel Beckett's absurdist classic buries a woman up to her waist in earth but rarely does its come across as a bitter marriage war. Photo: Patrick Redmond

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

“Is it not so, Willie, that even words fail, at times?” asks Winnie, a woman looking for reassurance from her laconic husband. Despite being trapped in the sandy wasteland of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist classic where she is buried to her waist in earth, Winnie is positively chatty, alive to the danger of becoming as silent and desolate as her surroundings. 

This hopefulness has given Happy Days a reputation as one of Beckett’s more upbeat plays, an optimism that previous revivals ran with. A virtuosic Fiona Shaw shed the obvious nods to an imprisoned housewife, refashioning Winnie as extravagant and well-rehearsed, as if she spent more time delivering high-flown one-liners at the Algonquin than being at home. In the play’s vast dark wilderness, she can shine as a bright counterpoint. 

It is a brave undertaking to see what would happen if you dimmed that luminance. In the Olympia Theatre and Landmark’s magnificent streamed production, fresh unsettling discoveries are found in details as subtle as the sombre dune shadows thrown by Paul Keogan’s lighting. “Is it not so, Willie, that even words fail, at times?” asks Winnie. In a staging where philosophical lines are tinged with bitterness, it sounds like a reflection on the wreckage of a marriage.
 
Director Caitríona McLaughlin knows well the war that has been waged. Siobhán McSweeney’s high-handed Winnie - done-up in pearls, lipstick and a fascinator - resembles someone dressed up with nowhere to go. (Like the innovation of Jamie Vartan’s set, allowing the confining earth to topple in through doorways and windows, the irony of being stuck at home is lost on absolutely no one watching). Pairing her with Willie, who is slovenly undressed, openly lascivious and, in Marty Rea’s excellent performance, nearly permanently has his back turned to her, there appears to be a gulf as wide as it is indifferent. (As someone observes at one point: “Why doesn’t he dig her out?”).

That tartness gives the play’s vaudeville comedy a sharp edge. Whether it be Rea’s mute irritated gesture reaching out to have a borrowed newspaper returned, or McSweeney’s sly condescending intonation when giving bossy instruction or a hyperbolic laugh, a lifetime of pent-up frustrations feels barely repressed. 

Yet, when Willie retired into his tunnel, I was struck by how Winnie’s daily ritual - where a blind rummage through her bag might return a magnifying glass to satisfy her curiosities or a lethal revolver - resembled a touching search for self-content in the loneliness. The time comes for her to hold a parasol above her head, and McSweeney beams a brave smile for several quiet moments before it crushingly starts to waver. 

Little is recognisable in the despair of the production’s second half, where a disappearing Winnie gently begins to weaken and Willie returns well-dressed as a literal moustache-twirling villain. Exhausted by the time they finally confront each other face-to-face, he can mutter only half of her name. “Win,” he says, in what almost sounds like conceding defeat. In this unhappy marriage, as this brutal production devastatingly understands, there are only losers. 

Streaming until 1st February.