Tag: Theatre Kingston 2019

Happy Days: Theatre Kingston’s rendition of Beckett is an enjoyable and engaging one

Happy Days: Theatre Kingston’s rendition of Beckett is an enjoyable and engaging one

Happy Days with Rosemary Doyle as Winnie. Photo Oliver Hirtenfelder

The works of modern Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, largely absurdist and tragicomic in scope, are certainly not intended to be simple crowd pleasers. Rather, they display a depressingly monotonous view of life, with the protagonist often not achieving their goal or ending up trapped in the same cycle of rumination as before. Happy Days, the second play in Theatre Kingston’s line-up for this season, is very much in this vein – completed and first staged in 1961 years immediately following, Beckett presents us with a middle-aged couple leading a vicarious existence in sand mounds on a beach. This production, directed by Craig Walker (also the head of the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University) and with stellar performances by Rosemary Doyle and Richard Sheridan Willis as the main characters, plays up both Beckett’s humour and bleak outlook on life to high effect. Both actors amply communicate the small amusements and tortured waiting their characters undergo, amidst a backdrop that is effectively rendered by Andrea Robertson.  

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Welcome to my Underworld: collective creation compellingly articulates the need for empathy

Welcome to my Underworld: collective creation compellingly articulates the need for empathy

Dramaturged and directed by native Kingston and award winning  playwright Judith Thompson, the collective creation Welcome to my Underworld consists of nine character pieces based on the performers’ real life experiences. These performers, representing a diversity of abilities and backgrounds, articulate the struggles their characters undergo on account of their identity or state of life. The artistic goal of this production is informed by its affiliation with RARE theatre, an endeavour founded by Thompson, whose mission is to serve “communities that have expressed a need not only to be recognized, but to effect, systemic radical change through the art of theatre.” While one piece was excluded on account of a performer’s illness on the night I went, the show was no less effective in getting this central message across, through the compelling scenes enacted by the rest of the performers. In this regard, Theatre Kingston has chosen a powerful and provocative production to open their 2019-20 season.  

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