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Happy Days

  • opened: 11/18/2003
  • closed: 1/31/2004
  • Arts Theatre
  • Box Office: 020 7836 3334
  • Details:
  • Summary: Visit theARCHIVE to hear a discussion. Happy Days was Samuel Beckett's last full-length play, a starkly comic meditation on the increasing isolation of the human condition in a hostile environment where all communication seems futile. Peter Hall first directed the play in 1975 at the Old Vic, with Peggy Ashcroft playing Winnie, the central character who appears buried up to her waist in the first act, and up to her neck in the second. Now Felicity Kendal takes on the role also played by a succession of leading actresses, including Billie Whitelaw in Beckett's own production. Michael Billington of The Guardian gave it four stars, saying: 'Felicity Kendal might be thought a shade too winsome to play Beckett's Winnie. But she acquits herself excellently in Peter Hall's revelatory production, lending the part a genuine emotional reality.' Susannah Clapp of the Observer agreed, declaring: 'The casting of Felicity Kendal is a revelation. She's a dainty, plucky, Irish Winnie, who suggests the character's forlornness by doing full-out manic skittering: it's amazing how many pouts and moues and grimaces can be created by one very anxious mouth.' Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard similarly praised Kendal, and concluded: 'Post-war theatre has offered no more mysterious stage picture, or one which better captures the sense of menace that characterises our cruel times, than this image of a trapped woman, beset by fear and dread.' Paul Taylor in the Independent reflected that: 'Nearly 50 years since he directed his first Beckett, Hall proves once again that there is no finer conductor of this playwright's punctiliously precise verbal music and that no dramatist is as paradoxically life-affirming.' Benedict Nightingale of The Times awarded four stars, describing Kendal as: 'tougher and a bit brasher than I recall Peggy Ashcroft being in the role - I don't think that dame spat out her morning toothpaste with quite such fierce relish - but no less touching and purposeful.' Charles Spencer in The Telegraph added to the four star reviews, commenting, 'Sir Peter Hall's production strikes me as being as near definitive as is possible in this sublunary world... As a dramatic image of the loneliness, the emptiness, and the ever- diminishing options of human existence, Happy Days has lost none of its power to terrify, startle and, more surprisingly, to delight.'
  • Author: Samuel Beckett
  • Director: Peter Hall
  • Composer: n/a
  • Lyricist: n/aSet Designer: Lucy Hall
  • Lighting Designer: n/a
  • Costume Designer: n/a
  • Choreographer: n/a
  • Cast Details: Felicity Kendal (Winnie); Col Farrell (Willie).