Customer Reviews

Happy Days

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Reading through the reviews here, I am absolutely bewildered as to how anybody could find this play intolerable or (even worse) dull. I am not one of these people that adore every word that Beckett ever wrote; I have severe reservations about some of the later minimalist pieces such as 'Breathe', but 'Happy Days' is one of the most concise and fully realised portraits of the human condition in modern drama. 'Waiting for Godot' is just playful and clever; this is sublime and intellectually adept, combining the structural rigidity of 'Not I' with the fluidity of existential ideas that proliferated throughout all his work. While this is not my favourite play of his, that is entirely due to a personal preference for 'Endgame' - there is nothing tangible that really lets it down.

So often Beckett's philosophical 'universality' seems like an excuse not to confront genuine dilemmas head on. 'Happy Days' is his most tangible work, a grim portrait of a marriage, where a wife is buried up to her waist/waste in a repetitious living death, trying to avoid confronting the reality of her situation, the brutish indifference of her husband, the incremental inevitability of life only getting worse.

Winnie is Beckett's most sympathetic character because she is the one we are the most likely to meet - she is aware of the hopelessness of her situation, but what can she do? Concentrate on something else - how many of us do better? The dissatisfaction most people have with the play presumably lies with the stage directions which interrupt the monologue every couple of words, rendering a fluid, rhythmic read impossible (like Beckett was ever easy). Instead of complaining, go and see it in a theatre, where words and gesture combine to moving effect, even when the language is at its most insistently ironic and playful (and it's very funny too, but don't they always say that about Beckett?). It certainly made me ashamed of the way I treat my wife.

The play is by beckett. I am without words 1, 2 and more
One endures but may not enjoy but possibly...

Happiness in small things? Oh well.

Anyway, this play is hilarious, and is not just about despair. At this stage of the game with Beckett, the characters can almost be read as one single character, their interactions/dialogue as mechanics of a single discursive mind. What can I say? Some people just like Beckett, and I think if you liked Endgame, you will certainly like this. I just had kind of an evil laughter about me the whole time I was reading it.

That said, this is no Waiting for Godot. By that, I only mean that Beckett was at a different point in his career here, and I think an even more brilliant one. He just really cuts to the core of things. I mean, the world really is screwed up if something like this can be written. But at the same time, isn't Beckett so much fun? He's an absolute master of language. It's interesting that somebody that studied under Joyce, a writer who used such elaborate means to develop his themes, should end up being so minimalist. Beckett is just brilliant, and though this play is not as elaborate as Endgame, it is my favorite, Endgame being my second.

Expensive for something that can be read so quick, but if you're reading this you're probably not looking for quantity anyway, and I imagine this will be one that I will just pick up and read now and again maybe once a year or so. It's that good. I don't know how seriously this was meant to be taken. I don't see it as trivial in any way. I think it is brilliant, but still have a light heart when I read this stuff. I guess there are some people who let this get them down. I seriously don't think this is about nihilism. If you want that, go to the French surrealists.

Try it out!

I have been a fan of Ruth White ever since I saw her in Lullaby and Let Them Hear You Whisper from the Broadway Archives. They never recorded her performance as Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. First, Beckett is not for everybody. Some people are going to find him difficult, hard, and even boring. Those people who have never read Beckett or studied him thoroughly are going to have a hard time understanding his brilliance. Beckett is the king of minimalism regarding theater and the absurd. Here is a middle aged woman stuck in mound doing a daily routine. We never do learn why she is in such a predicament because it's a Beckett metaphor for our lives being stuck in a mound. It's a literary device. He was brilliant.

When this 1961 play opens, a woman is buried waist deep in a pile of sand, a large bag on her left, and a deep tunnel behind and below her on her right. The environment is treeless and bleak, and we have no idea where the woman (Winnie) is or why and how she came to be in her present predicament. Throughout the first act, Winnie shares the minutiae of her life, pulling out her glasses, a parasol, a gun, a music box, and her hat from her bag and blathering on about brushing her teeth, while questioning if she has brushed her hair. Occasionally, she looks toward the tunnel, where she addresses an unseen "Willie," who does not respond. When he emerges from the tunnel briefly, humming, Winnie gaily announces "Another happy day," before he disappears again.

The only changes that occur in the play are the result of time--there is no plot. In the second act, Winnie appears older, she has sunk into the sand so that only her head shows, and she is unable to move it. Though she is not sure Willie is alive and calls to him repeatedly, he ignores her, until he suddenly emerges, dressed in tuxedo and top hat and tries to crawl upward toward Winnie. End of play.

In this classic example of the Theatre of the Absurd, the characters are out of sync with the world as the audience knows it, living in some universe with which we are unfamiliar. Their lives are meaningless, undirected, and irrational, yet, during the play, they somehow survive the passage of time, the lack of connection with each other, and their purposeless existence. Willie seems to be trying, futilely, to connect with Winnie at the end, but, absurdly, Winnie cannot see him and he cannot reach her.

Author Samuel Beckett once said, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness...it's the most comical thing in the world." In that sense this is a funny play, but there were few laughs from the audience when I saw it recently. The production starred one of New England's most brilliant actresses in one of her most extraordinary performances, the lighting provided visual interest, and the direction was first-rate. Yet despite the fact that this was an audience of theatre-goers accustomed to serious drama, most of the audience was yawning by intermission, and about one-third had fallen asleep. If Beckett's intention was to show the meaninglessness of life through the monotony of this play, he succeeded brilliantly--putting the audience to sleep is the ultimate absurdity. n Mary Whipple

Even though it was not the easiest read I've come across, that is beside the point. This poem has a large amount of symbolism that I have grown to love...the ringing bell, the revolver, the symbolic gestures of old age and all that he has put into this. Beckett put a lot into this one and it has a meaning, it is a scene in everyday life, put in a different perspective.

So we are supposed to "read in" to the deeper meaning of an elderly woman and her irrational attempts to delude herself about her terminal situation. Ok, I get that part. When the redundance of her babbling stream of consciousness became unbearable, I realized this was just an attempt to get back at his wife for badgering him to do a "happy" play, and we are all just victims of his ironic joke.

What is fascinating to me, is the rationalizing that must take place among Mr. Beckett's admirers. Admiring him for his great works, they must reach deep for some rationalization of their own as to why this is also a great work. This play gives you such a shallow plot, with no real sympathetic character, you can write your own backstory and intent. Yes, it has a few cute moments, but by-and-large if you don't like a stop sign, just pretend it's an ice cream cone - happy me. Brilliant? Ugghh!!!

The alarm clock rings and Winnie awakes. It is the beginning of a new day. The scene is a flat landscape with Winnie in the centre. She is embedded up over her waist in the mound. Winnie is happy about every single day. Willie, her husband, lies behind her and he seldom speaks. He is reading the newspaper. Winnie is preoccupied with oneself, putting thinks out of her bag and talking to Willie.
In the second act Winnie is embedded up to the neck in the mound. Her speech is an endless flow of words. She is more melancholy as in the first act. I think Beckett wanted to show the process of getting old and cope with it. They both are two different characters, but they complete in a very special way. Remembering the past and being happy with the present is one of the pleasures of life. Happy days will end, but if not today, it will be another precious day.

we walked out after 7 minutes. would have been 4 but I didn't want to suggest it immediately. she rambles & rambles. plays with her purse.
big deal