Theatre review: Up to your neck in Happy Days
Cork-born actor and Bafta winner Siobhán McSweeney delivers a tour de force performance in a play that challenges both the actors and the audience.
With Happy Days, Beckett seemingly wanted to test the limits of the actors, and most definitely the patience of the audience. But, Aherla’s Siobhán McSweeney has got more acting chops in her, well chops, and is outstanding as Winnie, the main character.
For the entire second half of Happy Days the only visible part of Winnie is her head. In fairness, Beckett acknowledges this and makes Winnie perform a full facial check-up to see what she can see, and what we can see. Bear in mind Winnie is buried up to her neck in a mound. As Winnie, McSweeney puffs her cheeks, sticks out her tongue, searches for her chin. It’s child play’s stuff, but McSweeney doesn’t put a facial muscle wrong. This is an actor in her peak, entombed in sand.
Why is Winnie buried in sand? Why hardly matters. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all.
If you’re at all familiar with Happy Days, it’s likely because of the setting. This is the Beckett play in which the main character is buried in sand or mud throughout, and talking in a stream of consciousness. When we first meet Winnie she’s visible from the waist up. For the second half Beckett buries more of her.
The mind will wander and the mind will go where it wants to go during Happy Days. On top of that, the Opera House was boiling over for the first half of the play. Tough going it was, so spare a thought for Winnie trapped in a mound with stage lights beaming down on her.
Willie, Winnie’s long suffering, mostly mute and mostly unseen partner is the only other character in Happy Days. While he’s not stuck in one place, he has mobility issues. He can stand up, but he can’t walk. And when he does move, he goes on a long drawn out crawl en route to Winnie. It’s like looking at an aged Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, but sapped of his energy and viciousness. He’s a pitiful creature.
I’m not sure Winnie would put it like that, but Willie hardly matters. In fact, and this is not to disparage actor Howard Teale who plays the hapeless Willie, but the setting outperforms him. Unlike Willie, who remains mostly hidden, the setting, like Winnie, is constantly visible, effectively restricting her movement. It’s a mise en scène as peculiar as it is memorable and unlike anything you may have witnessed in a while.
In fact, the Opera House stage for Happy Days reminded me of images of mudslides I would see shown on Japanese television at this time of the year, when Japan is belted by the rainy season. Whole mountain sides would be swept away in a river of mud which would then cake in the summer sun. Into that plonk Winnie, immobile, reflective, funny, sad and pragmatic as she gets on with the absurdity of living and being alive.
Winnie has little to work with except a few props, mainly a bag and its contents which she is drawn to. But Happy Days is a play about language and memory and emotions, but above all about language. Restricted of movements, Beckett puts all the focus on langauge.
There are some gems of lines in Happy Days, such as 'gravity's not what it used to be' and 'to be alive is a relief.' Siobhán McSweeney's performance is magnetic, yet over the course of its two-hour running time, the play becomes a hard sell and a slog at times. There are no deaths, great escapes, or dramatic revelations. In fact, very few movements take place.
Over and over Winnie proclaims that this is a happy day, which is not the same as being happy. "Oh this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day!"
Such lines are Winnie's prayers or mantras—phrases we repeat to ourselves, because ultimately we’re all stuck.
Go see director Caitríona McLaughlin’s version of Happy Days for McSweeney’s performance and her range of skills, but be warned Beckett’s got you where he wanted: stuck, and thinking about what’s the point of it all, waiting for the bell.
Happy Days runs nightly until Saturday, June 17 as part of Cork Midsummer Festival with two performances on the final day. For tickets and more information visit the Opera House website here.
