I consider fortunate to live in Manchester with its wonderful theatres. I grew up in and spent many years working in central London where you are spoilt for choice for theatre and the Arts, but, reality check, with a family it’s not so easy to exploit all those opportunities. The great thing about Manchester and the Royal Exchange Theatre in particular, is that whatever you see there you can pretty much guarantee it’s going to be good. And now that Maxine Peake seems to have made it her creative home, with so many productions in which she stars or directs, you know you are going to get something special.
I can’t say I’m that familiar with Beckett’s work; apart from Waiting for Godot, I’ve not seen any of his other plays. My husband is quite a fan though so we went along to Happy Days last week. It runs until 23 June, so if you have an opportunity to go and see it – DO! It is pretty special.
The play is basically a monologue, with Maxine as Winnie, middle-aged, lonely and trapped in an unfulfilling marriage, disconnected from wider society. This is represented quite literally with her up to her waist in a mound of earth, unable to move. Her husband, Willie, lies below, and speaks only very occasionally when addressed by the increasingly desperate Winnie. He is more mobile, but chooses not to be, spending his days lying in the sun, or in his hole, while Winnie chatters endlessly above him about nothing. The skill of the actor here, though, is conveying Winnie’s loneliness and her increasingly desperate mental state with meaningless dialogue and constrained physical movement. This is where the intimacy of the Royal Exchange works so well; the mound of earth rotates so that everyone in this round auditorium can see the lines of anxiety on Winnie’s face, the cracks in her mask. Her daily routine, the morning bell, the evening bell and all the little grooming and time-killing rituals in between, means she is just about holding it together. But for how long?
Spoiler Alert!
The second act gets a shade or two darker still and is quite shocking. By this stage Winnie is buried neck-deep and Willie is nowhere to be seen; he appears briefly at one point, encircling the mound in a morning suit. He has clearly moved on. Winnie is alone. At the start of act two Winnie is hanging on to her sanity by her fingernails. Despite the audience only being able to see her head (there are a number of screens so you can see her up close), Maxine Peake still manages to connect intensely via her facial movements, the interpretation of the words and her raw emotions. It is quite extraordinary.
The next production in the Royal Exchange’s main auditorium is The Queens of the Coal Age, written by Maxine Peake and directed by her long-time collaborator Sarah Frankcom. It promises to be another must-see. It can’t be long, surely, before Maxine attains national treasure status, but for the moment she is definitely regional treasure and we are very lucky to have her.
Go and see this play if you have the chance.
If you have seen this production, what did you think?
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My mother was from Manchester, but has lived in North Wales for many year. She was a great theatre goer when she lived there and has an autograph book stuffed with signatures from the likes of Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith. Apparently she would wait outside the Midland Hotel because anyone who was anyone stayed there in the ’40s and ’50s. For many years we took brief breaks together in the city and went to all sorts of wonderful theatre performances – but our favourite was always the Royal Exchange. We also saw some good stuff in the much smaller Library Theatre, but I’m not sure if it’s still open. Happy days. Wonderful city!
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Reblogged this on msamba.
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