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| Dianne Wiest. All Photos by Joan Marcus |
There’s the actress, and then
there’s the play. The actress is superb. The play? Well, I guess that’s a
matter of taste…or fortitude, or an inherent ability to find delight in the absurdly
static, or a deep desire to wallow in the existential meaning (or
meaninglessness) of life. In any case, Happy
Days, by Samuel Beckett and directed by James Bundy, is on the boards at
Yale Repertory Theatre through May 21. Go if you wish to see how a two-time
Oscar-winning actress can make lemonade out of lemons; stay home if you already
know that life bogs us down in quotidian repetition, so much so that we wake up
one morning to the alarm and feel stuck, unable to move, paralyzed.
Yes, from the moment the curtain
rises, Winnie (Dianne Weist) is literally and figuratively stuck, for she is
embedded up to her chest in stone, surrounded by an arid, lifeless landscape (designed
by Izmir Ickbal) with an unchanging, banal sky above her. For comfort, she has
a bag that contains all of her earthly possessions – a brush, a comb, an
intriguing toothbrush (what, pray tell, is written on its handle?), a bottle of
tonic, glasses and a magnifying glass, other pedestrian objects and…a gun,
affectionately called “Brownie.” (Near the end of the first act, as Winnie
picked up the gun, an audience member behind me whispered: “Use it.” The
comment spoke volumes.)
Winnie is a talker…she just won’t
shut up. Her husband, Willie (Brits will get the phallic reference) is seldom
seen and less heard. Willie (Jarlath Conroy) grunts, he groans, he reads the
newspaper, he crawls into a hole with Winnie’s guidance – she urges him to back
in. Written in 1960, long before we knew that men were from Mars and women from
Venus (1992), the play can be interpreted broadly in two ways: men are
uncommunicative oafs while women are sensitive creatures who need to express
themselves, to verbalize their emotions, or, on the other hand, men need to
shelter themselves, to figuratively or literally crawl into a hole to shield
themselves from women’s constant chatter (Beckett wrote the play just before he
was about to be married – interpret that as you will).
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| Jarlath Conroy |
Whether Winnie is buried up to her
chest or her neck, Wiest captivates in a role that is, to say the least,
physically restrictive. She deftly uses her hands, arms and face to convey a
broad range of emotions, many of which border on despair that is fought against
with the oft-repeated phrase: “Oh this is
a happy day.” The fact that it isn’t a happy day, that it can’t be a happy day,
that Winnie’s unbridled (and some would say maladjusted) optimism is the only
thing that keeps her from grabbing “Brownie” and ending it all, is made
manifest early on.
The play is an exercise in dialogue
as prattle, unrelenting prattle, a deluge of words used to hopefully keep the
“blue meanies” at bay. There can be no silence as Winnie expresses appreciation
for Willie’s grunts, a faint acknowledgement that she at least exists, that her
life has meaning (meaning defined by a male’s attention). Wiest gives Winnie,
both in voice and mannerisms, an often child-like quality, and her endless
stream of words is akin to those of a frightened child whispering over and over
again: “There are no monsters. There are no monsters.” Of course, there are
monsters that can slowly yet inexorably consume one’s soul.
If you have toyed or battled with
depression, Happy Days is not the
play for you. It is literate (there are a lot of allusions to philosophy and
poetry) and certainly single-minded in its view of life, whatever that view may
be, but it is also unrelenting, and the final image of Willie crawling towards
Winnie is open to several interpretations, including that Willie wishes to grab
“Brownie” and end it all.
To be blunt, this is a bleak
theatrical experience with many sexual undertones about how a marriage, and
life, can become not just dysfunctional but stultifying and, perhaps,
unbearable. As such, it offers the audience an intentionally warped magnifying
glass with which to view existence, and the hope that saying “This is a happy day” will make everything
better, or at least livable. It doesn’t.
Happy
Days runs through May 21. For tickets or more information call 203-432-1234
or go to www.yalerep.org
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