Overview
Synopsis
In a sterile trompe l’oeil landscape, a woman named Winnie is buried up to her waist in a mound of dirt. Her husband, Willie, lives in his own hole, barely heard, and even less frequently seen. Each day, a buzzer signals when Winnie should sleep, and when she should wake, and she takes that as a sign that someone, or something, is watching over her as she sinks deeper and deeper into the earth. Even as the ground creeps up around her neck, Winnie maintains her cheerful optimism, takes comfort in small mercies, and expects that every new day will be a happy one.
Named one of the 40 best plays of all time by The Independent, Happy Days contains one of the most haunting and powerful leading female roles in 20th century theatre. Touching on themes of memory, aging, and the particular suffering of women in modern society, Happy Days' enigmatic plot resists interpretation, and the questions uttered by Winnie herself - “What does it mean? What is it meant to mean?” - are left tantalizingly unanswered.
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Context
Happy Days was Beckett’s next major theatrical success after Waiting for Godot. Like many of Beckett’s works produced after the second world war, Happy Days is a dark comedy concerned with the ways in which people survive - or don’t - in a callous, uncaring and uncomprehending world. Beckett’s four post-war plays (Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days and *Krapp’s Last
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Act One
The curtain rises on a perfectly symmetrical mound of grass in front of a painted backdrop. In the centre of the mound, Winnie, a woman of about 50, is buried up to her waist. On one side of her is a black shopping bag, and on the other a large parasol. Winnie is asleep.
A long buzzer sounds, and Winnie wakes up. She observes the sky, which is painfully bright and unchanging, and makes a morning prayer. She then begins to prepare herself for her day, taking a toothbrush and
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Character Portrayals
See StageAgent members who have performed roles in Happy Days.
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