Sydney Theatre Company - Wharf Theatres

Samuel Beckett’s Winnie, the hapless, half-buried heroine of his 1961 play, Happy Days, is one of those pinnacle roles in theatre. Comparisons to Hamlet are common, but apt. It’s such an actor’s role that it makes sense, arguably with certain caveats, that the actor in question takes up at least one directorial rein. It certainly makes sense to Sydney Theatre Company, who are giving us the legendary Pamela Rabe (Belvoir’s August: Osage County) directed by Pamela Rabe (and Nick Schlieper) in this production. Winnie (Rabe) is immured in a mound of earth up to her waist. She wears what might be a faded ball gown. Harsh light beats down on the dark ground (which looks hand-painted) and a kind of horizontal proscenium structure is reminiscent of a CinemaScope screen or the jagged glow of a flatscreen TV, further heightening the sense of artificiality – or at least, a kind of constructed reality. But Winnie is all too human and real. She fends off the sun’s rays with a broken umbrella, she comments on her station (although we’re never given much context in regards to how she got where we find her), she chats with her laconic husband, Willie (a fantastic and funny physical performance from Markus Hamilton) who occasionally drags himself onto the stage, but rarely into her field of vision. Above all else, she tries to maintain an upbeat attitude, repeatedly declaring this to be yet another “happy day”. Even after the second act arrives, following a dark and ominous interlude...