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