Happy Days (play)

She continues to talk, examining her nose and recalling a time when a little girl called Mildred undressed her doll in the nursery at night, but is interrupted by anxiety about Willie and further memories of Mr. and Mrs. Shower.

In Act 1, after she methodically removes the items from her bag—a comb, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of patent medicine, lipstick, a nail file, a revolver and a music box.

She never questions or explains why she finds herself in the predicament she is in, but her dream is that she will "simply float up into the blue … And that perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all round me and let me out.

Much of his dialogue consists of his reading notices from his paper; his responses to Winnie—when he can be bothered to respond at all—are terse and barely communicative.

His only interest is to bury himself, figuratively, in an old newspaper or erotic picture postcards, or literally, underground in his cave asleep and seemingly unaffected by the bell that jars Winnie.

There is a childlike, if not exactly innocent, quality to him and there are many times in the play one might think Winnie was talking to a young boy rather than a grown man.

[17] Beckett confided to Brenda Bruce what was going through his mind as he sat down to write the play: He said: "Well I thought that the most dreadful thing that could happen to anybody, would be not to be allowed to sleep so that just as you're dropping off there'd be a 'Dong' and you'd have to keep awake; you’re sinking into the ground alive and it's full of ants;[18] and the sun is shining endlessly day and night and there is not a tree … there’s no shade, nothing, and that bell wakes you up all the time and all you've got is a little parcel of things to see you through life."

[22] James Knowlson has suggested images from Luis Buñuel's 1928 film, Un chien andalou or a photograph by Angus McBean of Frances Day.

Beckett required the set to have "a maximum of simplicity and symmetry" with a "very pompier trompe-l'œil backcloth to represent unbroken plain and sky receding to meet in far distance".

[1] "What should characterise [the] whole scene, sky and earth", he wrote, "is a pathetic unsuccessful realism, the kind of tawdriness you get in a 3rd rate musical or pantomime, that quality of pompier, laughably earnest bad imitation.

The fake backdrop calls to mind also the kind used by photographers that feature a painted body on a sheet of wood with a hole cut out where the head belongs popular at holiday venues.

Of note is the fact that he worked on the play while in the English seaside resort of Folkestone during the two weeks he was obliged to be resident in the area before his marriage to Suzanne could officially take place.

The boater Willie sports at a "rakish angle"[1] places his character clearly in the music hall tradition as does his formal wear in the second half of the play.

"In the Happy Days of 1979, Beckett very particularly played upon the physical attractiveness of [Billie] Whitelaw … Where most Winnies, such as Peggy Ashcroft and Irene Worth, look rather matronly, Beckett made Whitelaw’s Winnie into a siren, with black, low cut gown, haunting eyes, exaggerated lipstick … a woman, who while not any longer young, still manifests a powerful erotic dimension".

[31] Her memories often have a sexual edge: sitting on Charlie Hunter's knees; her first kiss; the two balls; an encounter in a toolshed; when handed the erotic postcard from Willie, she takes time to examine it before returning it in feigned offense and the story she tells of the small girl Mildred's (Beckett's original name for Winnie) sexual curiosity is genuinely disturbing.

The first production was at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City,[36] on 17 September 1961, directed by Alan Schneider with Ruth White as Winnie (for which she won an Obie) and John C. Becher as Willie.

The first London production was at the Royal Court Theatre on 1 November 1962 directed by George Devine and Tony Richardson with Brenda Bruce as Winnie and Peter Duguid as Willie.

Even Kenneth Tynan, one of the saviours of Godot, felt that Happy Days was "a metaphor extended beyond its capacity",[38] nevertheless, he admitted Beckett's strange, insinuating power and urged his readers to buy tickets for the play.

In 1964, an audio recording in French with Madeleine Renaud as Winnie was released by Disques Adès (TS 30 LA 568) as part of their " L'Avant-Scène" series.

[39] A German recording, with Grete Mosheim as Winnie and Rudolf Fernau as Willie, was released the same year by Deutsche Grammophon (LPMS 43 049).

[42] Billie Whitelaw played Winnie and Jocelyn Herbert designed the sets in a revival at the Royal Court Theatre in June 1979.

[36] In 1979, Andrei Serban directed a production produced by Joseph Papp at the Newman Theater in New York City, with Irene Worth as Winnie and George Voskovec as Willie.

[45] On 31 March 1996, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a production directed by Peter Wood with Geraldine McEwan as Winnie, Clive Swift as Willie and Phil Daniels as the Narrator.

[46] In March 1998, a German production at the Theater im Zimmer, Hamburg, with Gerda Gmelin as Winnie and Karl-Ulrich Meves as Willie was recorded and released on CD by Litraton (LIT 5 8725, ISBN 3-89469-725-3).

[49] In 2016, the Yale Repertory Theatre mounted a production with Dianne Wiest as Winnie and Jarlath Conroy as Willie, directed by James Bundy.

[50] That production subsequently transferred to New York's Theatre for a New Audience in downtown Brooklyn, with Wiest and Conroy reprising their roles, in April and May 2017.

In 2018, Maxine Peake played the role of Winnie at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, directed by Sarah Frankcom.

[51] In 2019, the Yale Repertory Theatre production was remounted in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum with Dianne Wiest returning as Winnie and Michael Rudko as Willie, again directed by James Bundy.

[53] In early 2020, Thinking Cap Theatre in Fort Lauderdale, Florida produced Happy Days, starring Karen Stephens as Winnie and Jim Gibbons as Willie, directed by Nicole Stodard.

[55] In May 2023, the Melbourne Theatre Company produced Happy Days, starring Judith Lucy as Winnie, directed by Petra Kalive.