Happy Days

Stage, static, a few actors, absurd. My theater experiences with these elements had never been good. So, even though I knew this play—reviewed by NY Times as the best Beckett's production— was promised to be a wonderful experience, I sat in my seat with little expectation. But the minute Fiona Shaw as Winnie started speaking with her darling Irish accent, I got completely mesmerized and flooded in the sad, happy, realistic, futuristic, desperate, cheerful, absurd world of this play.

Rough story is: Winnie, a woman no longer young, is embedded up to her “big bosom” in a mound of earth, “the Mother Earth symbol to end all other mother earth symbols”. She lives in a deluge of never-ending light from which there is no escape: even the parasol she unfolds at one point ignites, leaving her without protection. We learn that she has not always been buried in this way but we never discover how she came to be trapped so. - from Wikipedia

Imagine what an actor can do only with half of her torso. A bag stuffed with teeth blush, mirror, gun, lipsticks, calm is the only extra the actor can play with. Fiona absolutely used every inch of her acting skill and made this 1.5 hr play so original and upbeat. From my seat on the second flower balcony, I could clearly see her charming smile and every action she made with her arms, neck, head and face. In the next half of the play, the ground has covered all her body beside her head. Simply a marvelous one.

As great experience as the play was the Harvey Theater itself.