Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✩
by Samuel Beckett, directed by Leah Cherniak
Theatre Columbus, Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto
May 12-29, 2010
Samuel Beckett wrote, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” Theatre Columbus takes him at his word and has created the funniest production of his play Happy Days you are likely to see. Most of this success is due to Tanja Jacobs, whose flair for comedy is incomparable.
As some may know, Happy Days is the play from 1961 that features a woman buried up to her waist in earth in Act 1 and up to her neck in Act 2. Due to some unnamed catastrophe there is no longer any night, only unending day. Times for sleeping and waking are signalled by bell sounding like a fire alarm. On the surface this may look like a day at the seaside, but its interminability and increasing signs of disimprovement reveal it as an image of hell. The woman who seems to be gradually sinking into her grave is Winnie (Jacobs), whose only comforts are the contents of her large purse, her umbrella and her husband Willie (John Jarvis), who lives in a hole out of sight of the audience and crawls out periodically to read the one newspaper he has. Their relationship is like those of many middle-aged couples. He says virtually nothing. She talks all the time. Nevertheless, Winnie’s very identity depends on Willie’s presence. She must know he is there or at least believe he could be there, otherwise her stream of babble, and she herself, will lose all meaning.
Jacobs captures Winnie’s nature with humour and compassion. Her Winnie is an ordinary middle-class woman with pretensions to high culture, relishing the use of arcane vocabulary and vainly trying to recall “those unforgettable lines” of poetry. Jacobs amazingly mobile face and command of innumerable tones of voice lets us see both the child and the woman in Winnie performing her daily rituals to get through the day, “old style,” and wryly commenting on her performance as he goes. Her ability to act with face and voice alone are literally isolated for observation in Act 2. Jacobs makes Winnie’s attempts to remain cheerful despite her horrible situation seem both futile and heroic at the same time. Therefore, it’s quite frightening in Act 2 when Winnie invents a children’s story supposedly for her own amusement but really as an excuse to let herself scream when her incipient fear grows too strong. Jarvis makes as much as he can of his fairly thankless role. Rather than a pile of earth, designer Victoria Wallace has created a spot where garbage has been dumped and covered over for many years. Winnie, like any of us, is future refuse struggling to maintain a sense of humanity an individuality for as long as possible. What alternative is there but to laugh at the dreadful situation we all share?
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-05-13.
Photo: John Jarvis and Tanja Jacobs. ©Aviva Armour-Ostroff.
2010-05-13
Happy Days