To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was'. Read more …
Buried up to her waist and subsequently her neck in a mound of scorched earth, Winnie prattles away with dogged optimism to her largely unseen and uncommunicative husband, Willie, in an attempt to stave off hysteria and despair. A startlingly tragi-comic heroine, she veers skittishly between the absurd comedy of her daily rituals and her pitiless battle to face-off full-blown existential terror.
The late Billie Whitelaw brought emotional power, conviction and a profound frivolity to Beckett's Winnie and the role has become an iconic one for female performers. In this production, Karen Dunbar takes on the challenge of personifying Winnie in all her glorious complexity.
Happy Days is not going to change the opinion of any naysayers of Beckett’s, but for fans, and for an audience willing to try the experimental, the production does work a treat.
As masterful Dunbar is with such comic material, she is even more so in the play's more insular and pathos-driven second half, where her wonderfully held silences speak volumes about the pain she's in, only for her to be mercifully saved by the bell. Again.
The Chewin’ the Fat comedian plays Winnie with skill and poise in Andy Arnold’s production of Samuel Beckett’s claustrophobic play.
By the end, we become aware of the poignancy of her recurring theme: hardly “happy days, indeed”, but Winnie, with her endurance and stoicism, shows us that what we are left with is not, after all, merely emptiness.
As in the best productions of Beckett, Arnold, Dunbar and the company succeed in finding something compelling and new in an iconic work.
Karen Dunbar dives into dramatic despair, as Andy Arnold gives Beckett's play a strong outing.
A beautiful, bleakly hilarious adaptation which stands alongside Arnold’s finest.
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Friday May 15, 2015, until Saturday May 23, 2015. More info: www.tron.co.uk
RSS feed of Theatre reviews