“Really?” said a colleague somewhat incredulously when I told her that Happy Days (1961) was one of my very favourite plays. Samuel Beckett’s blast of existential despair is so utterly bleak that it becomes oddly thrilling, offering an astringent but vital allegory of the encroaching desolation and loneliness of life.
As ever, there’s Winnie (Juliet Stevenson), literally buried alive and in Vicki Mortimer’s imposing set entombed up to her waist in rock and gravel. She ekes out her days in a mood of desperate optimism, clutching at tiny scraps of happiness as she attempts conversation with her surly husband Willie (David Beames), who is stuck down a hole out of her reach. I’ve always felt a huge affinity for Winnie’s cheerful reliance on the ever-fascinating contents of her capacious handbag.
It takes skill to keep what is in essence a very lengthy monologue fresh, but Natalie Abrahami’s production, revived after a sell-out run last year, is perfectly paced. Stevenson is magnificent, both in the way she handles the demanding rhythms of Beckett’s words and also physically, as she traces elegant, balletic movements with her upper body that suggest a whole hinterland of lost possibilities.
Never have two hours of almost narrative-free desolation been so compelling.
Until March 21 (020 7922 2922, youngvic.org)
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