{"id":9349,"date":"2018-06-04T22:19:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T21:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9349"},"modified":"2018-06-04T22:21:16","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T21:21:16","slug":"happy-days-royal-exchange-samuel-beckett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9349","title":{"rendered":"Happy Days<\/strong> | Royal Exchange | Samuel Beckett"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy Days | Royal Exchange | May 25th – June 23rd<\/strong><\/p>\n

We find ourselves in the Royal Exchange, in the company of Maxine Peake again, having seen her Hamlet, her Miss Julie, her Skriker, her Queens of the Coal Age. For Beckett\u2019s Happy Days<\/em>, we find her buried, at first, up to her middle, and later, up to her neck, her face vividly brought to startling life by a number of screens suspended over her head. In the programme, Director Sarah Frankom shares the fact that she and Maxine \u201chave wanted to do something funny for quite a long time now.\u201d For those not in the know, Happy Days<\/em> is Samuel Beckett funny. Samuel \u201cbirth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more\u201d Beckett. Samuel \u201cHabit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit\u201d Beckett. Samuel \u201cNothing is funnier than unhappiness\u201d Beckett. You get the drift. <\/p>\n

In his biography, Damned to Fame, James Knowlson quoted Samuel Beckett on the subject of Happy Days<\/em> as saying, \u201cI thought that the most dreadful thing that could happen to anybody, would be not to be allowed to sleep so that just as you’re dropping off there’d be a ‘Dong’ and you’d have to keep awake; you\u2019re sinking into the ground alive and it’s full of ants; and the sun is shining endlessly day and night and there is not a tree \u2026 there\u2019s no shade, nothing, and that bell wakes you up all the time and all you’ve got is a little parcel of things to see you through life. And I thought who would cope with that and go down singing, only a woman.\u201d You can see why the part would appeal to Maxine Peake and also why the play would gather resonance, at this particular point in the history of the world. <\/p>\n

We meet Peake\u2019s Winnie atop a vast muddy pile, slowly rotating to suit the demands of theatre in the round, her Willie (played by David Crelllin, who we last saw at the Exchange in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning<\/em>) asleep behind her, at the foot of the mound, by his hole. As with The Skriker<\/em>, the play is largely a monologue delivered by Winnie, who provides a running self-commentary on her body (\u201cno pain – not much – hardly any\u201d), her day, what she sees, the contents of her bag, what she remembers (\u201cthat day – what day\u201d) amidst the vacillations of her memories, indignities and small triumphs wrestling for the uppermost position, Winnie\u2019s fight to remain \u2018glass is half full\u2019 epitomised by the line, <\/p>\n

\u201cThat is what I find so wonderful, that not a day goes by\u2026 hardly a day, without some addition to one\u2019s knowledge however trifling, the addition I mean, provided one takes the pains.\u201d<\/p>\n

We first saw Happy Days<\/em> performed by Prunella Scales back in 1993 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and Scales\u2019 Winnie was deeply tragic from the outset, an actress at a turning point in her career, playing Winnie as if she was Lear; Peake\u2019s Winnie is very different. She\u2019s funny, to be sure, a dry dame, we sense, a woman who was once something more, fallen on hard times but able to summon a broad Boltonian accent to tell a story of a man and wife who visit her to ask, \u201cWhat does it all mean?\u201d She harks frequently back to the music hall traditions that Beckett was himself so fond of, bending and turning throughout the first half to share parts of dialogue over her shoulder, as if in asides, to parts of the audience she wouldn\u2019t otherwise be able to face, and there is laughter throughout – far more laughter than I\u2019ve ever heard in the performance of a Beckett play. <\/p>\n

But Peake\u2019s Winnie is also Offred, is also Twin Peak<\/em>\u2019s Laura Palmer. As with the TV adaptation of The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>, there are parts of Happy Days<\/em> that can only be described as harrowing – particularly the shorter second act. And the fear that we see percolating throughout the first act, the speedy delivery, the wobbly bottom lip, the tears that threaten, reach their apotheosis in the marrow-curdling screams which are impossible to separate from the moment in the recent Twin Peaks<\/em> revival when Laura Palmer screams as if her soul is being torn in two. Frankom and Peake, we sense, feel these resonances and use them. This play may be more then 50 years old but by god it couldn\u2019t be more relevant now. The set makes a subtle apocalyptic statement about the environment, with all manner of plastic crap woven into the fabric of the set. But there is more here than this. If Beckett\u2019s play is about the lot of a woman, then this adaptation cannot but be viewed through the filter of #metoo. <\/p>\n

And yet even this is reductive. Peake has spoken of the \u201cjoy\u201d there is, between Winnie and Willie, the comfortable pleasures of a long marriage, the easiness that exists between them alongside the irritation. \u201cThis play is about the positives that come out of being with somebody that long, and scrutinises that partnership and how it functions.\u201d Frankom too agrees that there is light amidst the shade: \u201cIt celebrates the little details of a very long life lived by two people who are symbiotic; they\u2019re their own eco-system.\u201d Perhaps the best way of approaching it, however, if you didn\u2019t know too much in advance, is David Crellin\u2019s own definition: \u201cIf the League of Gentleman were doing a one-woman play about marriage, they might come up with something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end, perhaps all you really need to know is that this might well be the best work that Peake and Frankom have done in the Royal Exchange and I for one will be returning to watch it at least one more time. <\/p>\n

by Peter Wild<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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