Happy Days Reviews
Stage and Cinema- Somewhat Recommended
"...Both the limitations and the expansiveness of language is key. In Happy Days, it's as if Winnie is trying to write her own story but can't find the storyline or her true self. She repeatedly sighs that words fail her, as she moves between present, past, and future tenses, searching for a way to define herself but always coming up short. She falls back on marveling what happy days she has had, what a happy day she is having, and all the happy days that lie ahead."
Culver City News- Highly Recommended
"...Wiest's amazing physical and vocal skills allow us to see Winnie as an almost innocent and childlike character, going through her daily routine of examining the contents of her large leather bag on the sand beside her or raising her sunshade umbrella simply because she can dance with it to imaginary music. Even when she shocks us by pulling out a gun, which finally rouses Willie from his adult postcard viewing reverie, Winnie seems oblivious to her lot in life so similar to an abused woman caught in a relationship from which she cannot escape."
Showmag- Recommended
"...With this play, Beckett made sure that the terrain of the setting and the character's actions were strictly prescribed. There is not much wiggle room for wild variants of interpretation. Yet Weist manages to elevate Winnie from the dowdiness of her running monologue to a sort of transcendent bonne volonte that begins to chip and crack gradually. "Was I lovable once?" she asks Willie, who does not answer. As her façade gradually falters, we begin to understand her as a metaphor for our own lives. With Beckett, and certainly with this production, we must take stock of ourselves, the world, and our place in it."
Stage Raw- Highly Recommended
"...Happy Days invites the audience to gawk at the strangeness they witness. Throughout the play, Winnie repeats how comforting it is for her to have someone - anyone - listen to her. There are endless metaphors and meanings to unearth in Happy Days: the apocalyptic effects of climate change, the crushing monotony of time, the triviality of life itself. But Beckett's plays are also strange for the sake of being strange, for seeing what happens when the mundane is translated into the bizarre, and for relishing what happens when an Academy Award-winning actress like Wiest has only her face and voice to tell a story."