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Happy Days
Royal Exchange Theatre
Manchester
WHAT is the point of it all?
Ah, the impossible question. You are born, you endure life and, if you’re lucky, you might find love and a little happiness. Then, in the blink of an eye, you're hurtling towards the long dark sleep.
Pointless? Perhaps. But stand in front of a Picasso or Titian or open your ears to the sweet notes of a Verdi opera or the magic sound emerging from Davis’s trumpet and then maybe the answer isn’t too difficult.
Samuel Beckett liked to explore the meaning of life and a playwright who can plonk a dirty great lump of earth in the centre of a stage, bury one character in the middle of it, with the other just sleeping, and can still create two hours of the most riveting theatre probably has the answer.
As with a Verdi opera or a Davis horn solo, putting the notes together is only part of it. The full beauty needs perfect delivery and that applies to Beckett’s seemingly random disconnected language. No fears here, though, as the brilliant Maxine Peake once again mesmerises with a scintillating performance as the tortured Winnie.
Given the range of Peake’s recent work, from a magnificent Blanche du Bois, via a frustrated health worker battling indifference to child sex abuse to a 1970s stand-up comedian, she has pushed her way up to the pinnacle of women actors.
In the first half, she is buried to her waist and talks feverishly about the contents of her bag, the heat of the sun and interweaves snippets of a past life with her beloved Willie. The latter mainly sleeps but is given to the odd grunt.
After the interval, Winnie is buried to her neck. Age has taken its toll as her babbling becomes more frantic and the fear drips from her face as she grapples with a fading memory and the approaching shadow of death.
Peake conveys these powerhouse emotions with her extraordinary facial expressions, while a tiny camera projects every tick and quiver on a bank of plasma screens hanging from the roof.
This is a deeply personal play where everyone will take something different from Winnie’s plight. Life may be complex, difficult and even sad, but it is also beautiful, sweet and can be immensely uplifting.
Go, connect, immerse and above all think. The reward will be worth it.
Runs until June 23, box office: royalexchange.co.uk
