Why “Happy Days” is Happy Theatergoing

Having never seen Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, I approached the production that’s now playing at The Flea Theater through July 18 in the same way that many people approach a bowl of Brussels sprouts: dubiously, but feeling as though it's something I should try because it would be good for me. 

But as all but the most die-hard carnivores have discovered, Brussels sprouts, when prepared well, can be delicious. And I came to a similar conclusion about this appealing version of Beckett’s meditation on human resilience in the face of existential adversity.

Happy Days famously opens with a woman stuck waist-high in a big mound of dirt. Unable to move, she still goes through a morning routine of saying a prayer, brushing her teeth and otherwise preparing for the coming day, even though no one ever visits and her only companion is her near-mute husband Willie who spends most of his time in a hole on the other side of the dirt pile.

Undaunted, the woman, her name is Winnie, fills her time with ceaseless chatter and grabs even the slightest reason to proclaim, “Oh, this is a happy day.” But that sunny outlook is put under even more pressure in the second act. The sight of the new challenge prompted an audible “Oh no,” from one man in my audience, who, apparently like me, had never seen the play before but had become totally wrapped up in it.

Beckett, the high priest of existential despair, is said to have written Happy Days in response to his wife’s request that he write a happy play. And in odd ways, it is optimistic. Endless playwrights have tried to imitate Beckett over the years but while they can set their characters in preposterous situations and give them witty things to say, very few have figured out how to imbue them with the humanity that animates even the most absurd of Beckett’s works.

His Winnie is a stand-in for all of us who soldier on, knowing that, ultimately, we will lose in the game of life but find solace in our rituals, our dreams and the connection, no matter how tenuous, to one another. Maybe it’s because I have a big birthday on the horizon but Winnie’s indomitability in the face of her approaching mortality moved me greatly.

Talking for almost two straight-hours, without being able to move or even, at times, to gesture, Winnie is a monster of a role and although Brooke Adams has spent far more time doing movies and TV than theater, she proves she’s up to the task (click here to read an interview with the actress).

Adams is still achingly lovely but now 66, she gives a vanity-free performance—flaunting her flabby arms and not-so-pert breasts—that cuts to the heart of the play, and of those of us watching it. 

Her Winnie can be as perky as a '50s-era sitcom mom but she’s not unaware of her situation and there are times when she almost succumbs to the encroaching despair. But then she summons up her courage and carries on a little while longer.

Willie is played by Adams’ real-life husband Tony Shaloub. It’s a small role and most of its dialog is conveyed in grunts and physical bits of business. But Shaloub, an inveterate scene stealer who can’t help himself even when the person he’s robbing is his own spouse, is terrific.

And Andrei Belgrader’s direction is as light on its feet here as it was flatfooted in CSC’s recent production of Doctor Faustus (click here for my review of that one). Everything—the set, the lighting—is rendered slightly artificial, underscoring the metaphorical while simultaneously anchoring the play in the real.

The ending of Happy Day is purposefully ambiguous but Adams and Shaloub give it a hint of hopefulness that might disappoint ardent Beckettists but that would probably please the determinedly sanguine Winnie as much as it did me.

Stuck in the '50s with "Cry-Baby"

There weren’t a lot of surprises when the Tony nominations were announced earlier this month. Except maybe that Cry-Baby had won a shot at the Best Musical award. It’s not a terrible show and people who see it will probably have a good enough time (click here to see excerpts from the show). But, with one exception (Rob Ashford’s high energy choreography), it isn’t an award-caliber show either. What it is is simply another homage to the Fifties.

Which raises the following question: hasn’t the time come for Broadway to declare a moratorium on plays and musicals about the Fifties? This past season alone, A Catered Affair; Grease; Come Back, Little Sheba; The Country Girl; Thurgood and, of course, Cry-Baby, were all centered around events that took place in the post-War period between 1946 and 1964 and I’m not even counting leftover shows like Jersey Boys. And then there’s Happy Days, a musical version of the old TV series about life during the Eisenhower era that is currently playing at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut.

Why all this looking back? And why to that period? I can’t believe it’s because people feel that the music back then was so great. Is everyone really all that nostalgic for the supposedly more innocent era of ducktailed bad boys and poodle-skirt wearing good girls? Or is Broadway trying to make up for the fact that it overlooked rock and roll when it first arrived on the scene? Whatever the reason, isn’t it time to move on?

And while I’m making suggestions, it probably isn’t such a good idea either for Broadway to pick up the Hollywood bad habit of trying to make sequels to successful shows. The current thinking seems to be if The Producers or Hairspray sell well, let’s see what other Mel Brooks or John Waters movie we can turn into a cash-cow musical. Well, you didn’t see Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein turning to other states after their Oklahoma was a hit.

Cry-Baby suffers in comparison to its predecessors—both the other '50s shows now on stage, and the movie that spawned it. The show’s publicity campaign makes much of the fact that the score is by David Javerbaum, executive producer of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show”, and Adam Schlesinger, a founder of the rock band Fountains of Wayne. And it is great that guys with such hip credentials are interested in working on Broadway but it’s also clear that here, they are simply guns for hire. Even so, several of their songs are clever enough that I’d like to see what they’d do when given free reign.

A more charismatic leading man might have diverted attention away from the show’s shortcomings or given it the kind of edge Johnny Depp did in the movie version. James Snyder, making his Broadway debut, works hard and sings well but his Cry-Baby tends to get lost in the crowd when the ensemble is on stage. I can’t help thinking what someone like Cheyenne Jackson (now starring in Xanadu and in a zillion chatroom complaints about why he didn’t get a Tony nomination for his role as that show’s muse-needy artist Sonny) might have done in the part of Cry-Baby. Although he's probably had his fill of the Fifties too, having already done All Shook Up, the ill-fated juke box musical based on Elvis songs.