Happy Days
Feb. 19th, 2014 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI went to a Beckett play last night. It was called Happy Days, and centred around a woman trapped up to her waist in rock on a mountainside, with occasional interjections from her husband, who was mostly off-stage. So, unable to move, and with almost nothing to play against, Juliet Stevenson had to carry an entire play practically single-handed. And she did, most effectively. It was weird, and incomprehensible, and compelling, and satisfyingly meta.
At one point, she told a story about two people who wandered by an indeterminate length of time ago, who stopped and had a discussion about her predicament. "But what is it all supposed to mean?" the man asked his un-interested companion. Genius.
There was a Chekovian but not Chekovian gun, which lent a rather sad interpretation to the play's conclusion, and the lights went on and off several times while the two actors remained frozen at the end - an odd kind of curtain call (or a sense that the situation would perpetuate over the course of infinite further days). In fact, at no point was the illusion of the premise broken - Stevenson was obscured by a tent during the interval so we never saw her come on or go off stage.
Bonkers but brilliant!
At one point, she told a story about two people who wandered by an indeterminate length of time ago, who stopped and had a discussion about her predicament. "But what is it all supposed to mean?" the man asked his un-interested companion. Genius.
There was a Chekovian but not Chekovian gun, which lent a rather sad interpretation to the play's conclusion, and the lights went on and off several times while the two actors remained frozen at the end - an odd kind of curtain call (or a sense that the situation would perpetuate over the course of infinite further days). In fact, at no point was the illusion of the premise broken - Stevenson was obscured by a tent during the interval so we never saw her come on or go off stage.
Bonkers but brilliant!
