Happy Days
Riverside Studios, London
Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but if there were an award for theatrical images, he’d also have deserved that. His fierce ear coexisted with a searing eye. Many unfamiliar with Happy Days (1961) know from photographs the striking sight of a woman buried up to the waist (and, in Act II, neck) on a beach.
Previous productions have often enclosed her in yellow holiday sand, but Trevor Nunn’s sixtieth anniversary revival (until 25 July) punctiliously inters Lisa Dwan’s Winnie in “the expanse of scorched grass” of Beckett’s stage direction, resembling the scrubby dunes to be found on the east coasts of the US and UK.