Happy Days – Footnotes
The Footnotes to our episode on Samuel Beckett’s timeless play Happy Days include observations on the power of Beckett’s theatrical imagery, as well as the indeterminate nature of time in the play.
Installation artist
When I asked Lisa Dwan about the striking visual tableau that we see on stage in Happy Days, she described Samuel Beckett as an “installation artist”. The visual settings of his plays are extraordinarily arresting. They are simple, yet mysterious and powerful. The lone tree in the otherwise empty place where Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot, or the room with the windows set high up in the wall, two dustbins and a single throne-like chair in Endgame. We are aware that these particular locations are part of a larger world, but the characters do not have any agency to change or exit their self-contained space. Their constrained circumstances prompt many questions – what is in the world beyond? How have they arrived in this situation? How do they practically survive without the usual necessities?
In fact it is notable how quickly we put aside such questions and accept the status quo of the world we are witnessing. We understand very quickly that the space that the characters occupy is a metaphoric one. As Lisa observed, Beckett’s landscapes reflect a “psychological state”. We experience directly the state of existential uncertainty and enquiry the characters do, and we also understand that there are no rational explanations for what we are seeing. We accept that any answers are going to be unknowable, and we simply adapt to the circumstances we are presented with, as the characters do.
In stripping back the physical world to a minimum Beckett also imbues it with a sense of existential challenge, so that what we witness and experience is essentially consciousness itself. How we respond to psychological pressure, doubt, or fear. As Lisa so succinctly put it, Beckett was “putting the mind on stage”.
“The old style”
Throughout the play Winnie refers obliquely to how life was in a time before as being in “the old style”. Although she never explains explicitly what occurred to separate her from the past, we understand her reference to be describing a world and a life that we would recognise as normal. She describes her first dance, her wedding day, and even an encounter with a man in a tool shed.
Winnie suggests that time passed differently in “the old style”, where the definition of a ‘day’ was not signalled by the ringing of the bell: “Not a day goes by, to speak in the old style”. Linear time as we know, and it used to be for Winnie, no longer seems to apply. There does not appear to be any sunset; the weather never changes; nothing grows; and in fact Winnie suggests that things that she removes from her bag will reappear again tomorrow. Time is an artificial construct of the old world and a way of thinking: “May one still speak of time? Say it is a long time now, Willie, since I saw you. Since I heard you. May one? One does. [smile] The old style!”
Yet we do have a sense that Winnie’s time is running out. The earth has risen to engulf her up to her neck. “Ah well, not long now, Winnie, can’t be long now, until the bell for sleep.” And of course the title of the play refers to transient, subjective and limited time. In the end Winnie exclaims: “Oh, this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day!…After all….So far.” Ambiguous, inevitably.
063 – Dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel
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Brian Friel’s magical memory play Dancing at Lughnasa is set at the time of the harvest festival in rural Ireland in 1936. It’s account of the events of that summer in the house of the five unmarried Mundy sisters is filtered many years later through the memory of Michael, the son of the youngest sister. His memory is undoubtedly unreliable, but it is also funny, poetic and profoundly poignant.
Josie Rourke, who directs the gorgeous new production of the play currently playing at the National Theatre in London, joins us to explore Friel’s spellbinding masterpiece.
062 – Private Lives, by Noël Coward
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Noël Coward’s play Private Lives is both a dazzling dramatic comedy and an excoriating portrait of love and marriage among the disaffected elite of the Jazz Age. Coward himself starred in the premiere production in both London and New York in 1930, the critics acclaiming the show’s construction and wit, but predicting that it would not last. As a new production opens at the Donmar theatre in London, I ask Coward’s newest biographer, Oliver Soden, why the play has aged so well.
061 – Sea Creatures, by Cordelia Lynn
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Cordelia Lynn’s play Sea Creatures is a poetic exploration of loss and grief, its setting betwixt the sea and shore rich in metaphoric resonances. As we record this episode, Sea Creatures is playing at the Hampstead Theatre in London in a spellbinding production directed by James Macdonald.
I am delighted to be joined by playwright Cordelia Lynn to talk about her fascinating new play.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – March
Before the theatres went dark this month I was lucky enough to see Caryl Churchill’s A Number at the Bridge, and spend more than seven hours in thrall to Robert Lepage’s Seven Streams of the River Ota at the National. Plus, some thoughts on what we miss when there is no theatre.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – February
Another great mix of shows this month, from Tom Stoppard’s new play, to Ibsen, Beckett and newer plays in smaller London venues.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – January
The January roundup included both classic plays, such as The Duchess of Malfi, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, as well as recent musicals Dear Evan Hansen and Girl from the North Country …
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