Happy Days

Using Russian theatrical techniques to re-create the style of a Kabuki onnagata (a female role played by a man) for the lead character Winnie, visiting actor-director Oleg Liptsin performs Samuel Beckett’s last full-length play, Happy Days.

“How often have I said, in evil hours, sing now, Winnie, sing your song, there’s nothing else for it.” Winnie, a middle-aged woman who says these words to herself, is the triumph of Samuel Beckett’s wry, spare, poetic drama about the tenuous ties between people – and with the world. Often alone onstage, with just the contents of her handbag for props, Winnie optimistically delivers her soliloquy about her life – her happy days – as she’s engulfed deeper and deeper in a mound of earth, accompanied only by her mostly silent (and mostly absent) husband Willie, with his newspaper and his dirty postcards. The audience learns nothing but the most personal touchstones of Winnie’s life from her monologue to no-one, the poetic expression of a naked soul that is truly Winnie’s Song.

Liptsin’s performance as the soliloquizing Winnie is matched by the participation of Jayne Entwhistle as Winnie’s almost silent husband, Willie.

This exclusive Berkeley performance of Happy Days is produced by Antares Ensemble (member, International Theatre Ensemble) to benefit the UC Berkeley TAAP Scholarship Fund, sending students with extreme financial need from the Oakland and Berkeley areas of California to the University of California at Berkeley.