Reviews 2003
Reviews 2003
✭✭✭✭✩
by Samuel Beckett, directed by Vikki Anderson
Soulpepper and DVxT Theatre, Premiere Dance Theatre, Toronto
July 16-August 16, 2003
"Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun"
The curtain opens. A deafening alarm bell rings. Several minutes later a woman in a party dress buried up to her waist in earth under a blazing sun awakens. This is Winnie, the central figure of Beckett's 1963 play "Happy Days". Despite the oddity of her situation, she declares, "Another heavenly day".
So begins Beckett's depiction of the conflict between the mind that likes to believe in its freedom and control and the finite, decaying body where it is trapped and whose death extinguishes both. Unlike Beckett's better-known "Waiting for Godot" and "Endgame", the elements of "Happy Days" because they involve everyday activities hit closer to home. To help herself pass the time in her fixed position, Winnie busies herself with brushing her teeth, considers combing her hair, putting on her hat, chatting with taciturn, largely unseen husband Willie, imperfectly recalling "immortal lines" of poetry, bringing up memories of the past, telling stories and deciding whether to sing her song from "The Merry Widow". The bag, the objects in it, especially the Browning revolver, her parasol, are all "mercies", comforts to ease the torture of days that now are signalled by a bell for sleeping and a bell for waking. As usual in Beckett, life on earth is hell.
A situation we might have thought intolerable in Act 1 becomes worse in Act 2. There Winnie is buried up to her neck and can only recall what comforts the bag and revolver used to be. She continues to cheer herself with the small things that make her day "happy", but we and she are now all too aware of what will happen in Act 3, if there were one.
Director and designer Vikki Anderson has decided to make Winnie's situation more humiliating by making the enclosing mound of earth, under Bonnie Beecher's deliberately hash light, look like a giant cow patty. Rather than having the mound grow higher as in some productions making the powers that be seem actively malevolent, Anderson has Winnie sink in this filth up to neck, as if living were really a gradual sinking into the grave.
Al Beckett's plays are all theatrical metaphors. Winnie, with the generally unresponsive Willie as audience, is constantly prompting herself--"Now begin Winnie. Now begin your day"--to keep herself going through her intolerable allotted time. Anderson highlights this aspect by placing an old-fashioned proscenium arch around the central mound and within the modern proscenium of the Premiere Dance Theatre.
As a director, Anderson takes a common view of the text, playing up Winnie's unflagging optimism, heroism in fact, in trying to triumph over adversity by keeping her spirit high as she sinks ever lower. Only in Act 2 does she allow Winnie to realize the full horror of her situation. While this makes a clear contrast between the two acts, it comes at the expense of preventing Winnie's role from being richer in Act 1, aware of her plight but deliberately suppressing her fear. In Beckett's own production in London in 1979, Winnie was already coming unhinged in Act 1, undertaking her daily ritual with an air of desperation and sense of futility. Nevertheless, Anderson does manage Act 2 beautifully by bringing out the full ambiguity of the final image. Is Willie reaching out to Winnie or, a final blow to Winnie's self-confidence, to the revolver?
Given Anderson's directorial approach that doesn't allow her to mine as much from the text in Act 1 as she otherwise could, Martha Burns gives a sterling performance as Winnie. Burns is really too young and healthy looking for the role, making Winnie seem like someone who was taken in her prime. But Burns overcomes this by playing Winnie as a Rosedale socialite whose preoccupation with minutia has successfully overridden concern about the larger issues in life. This may not be a deep reading but it is hilarious and perfectly executed.
That Burns could have made more out of Act 1 is obvious in Act 2. She commands the stage simply with her voice and facial gestures. Now desperation has crept into her tone. Her single sottovoce cry of "Help" is chilling. The story she tells herself about a mouse running up a girl's leg is clearly an excuse for her finally to scream, to react to the horror. It is a harrowing moment. Her final look at Willie when doubt about his goal enters her mind is devastating.
Michael Simpson is also excellent in the rather thankless role of Willie. His few remarks both reveal a real link to Winnie and his mental preoccupation. His only full appearance on stage is fittingly, as often in Beckett, both ridiculous and pitiful.
Though Anderson could have brought out more from the text than she does, this is still a very good production and shows yet again what a superb actor Martha Burns is. On the evening I attended the audience sat in respectful silence throughout as if they had come determined to endure a depressing play. Yet the play overflows with humour based on truthful observations of human behaviour. Yes, Beckett does confront us with the undeniably unpleasant facts of existence, but he encourages to laugh at our shared, inescapable plight. After all, what is the alternative?
Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Michael Simpson and Martha Burns. ©2003 Cylla von Tiedemann.
2003-07-25
Happy Days