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review I have a confession to make. It's about Samuel Beckett. More to the point, it's about the plays Samuel Beckett wrote. People ask, "you like Beckett?" I say, "uh-huh." People ask, "you think Beckett is one of the major voices in 20th century playwriting?" I say, "no doubt about it." So what's my confession? Watching Beckett has always been a grueling experience for me. Do I fully appreciate his unique brilliance? Yep. Do I ponder the fierce veracity of his skewed universe? Without a doubt. But, with every Beckett I've seen over the years, I confess that sooner or later during the performance what I'm thinking more than anything is, "how close is the nearest Denny's and how soon can I get an Ultimate Omelette?" There's a new group in town might make a change in my thinking. Rude Guerrilla Theater Company has christened their new storefront theatre in Santa Ana with quite possibly the most difficult of all Beckett plays, "Happy Days". What we have here is a woman buried in a mound of trash who prattles on about the minutiae of her life non-stop and nearly motionless for more than an hour. Sound deadly? It can be. It has been. It will be again. But for right now, Rude Guerrilla does something I haven't seen before with this play. They make it relevant. Perhaps it was seeing all that confetti piled up on the stage so close to election time. Winnie (Susan Shearer-Stewart) is buried first up to her waist, then up to her neck in it. A huge mound of confetti. Her companion Willie (Dave Barton; yes, the same Dave Barton who contributes to this site) sports a straw bowler and a small American flag stabbed defiantly into his battered recliner. I look at them, I see us looking back. Us. You. Me. We, the people. After the polls have closed. After the speeches are finished. After the 11th-hour TV spots are done. Us. Mr. and Mrs. Joe America, abandoned again in the dimming twilight of the American Century, buried up to our necks in the detritus of a promise betrayed, crushed slowly in a high and suffocating heap along with the discarded hair dryers and tossed toasters of our wasteful existence. Us. Barton's crisp and cogent staging (yes, he directed, too, along with just about everything else on this production except pouring the drinks in the lobby) and Shearer-Stewart's unrelentingly vapid effervescence anchor the dicey purpose of Beckett's language to a relevant vision as firmly as Winnie is anchored to her mound of refuse. Beckett taunts us with his language, teases us, infuriates us. Language to Beckett is not what we expect language in plays to be. Often, it is not even what we need it to be. Winnie's words do not reveal and explain her world, her predicament, even her relationship with Willie. They explain nothing. Rather, they conceal and obscure her situation even as they sedate and reassure her existence with the cold comfort of an infinitely repeated routine. Language for Winnie is an anesthetic against the gnawing reality of her complete and total inconsequence. Barton's direction guides Shearer-Stewart's elastic performance to just the right play of tautness and give while saddling his own Willie with a heavy slothlike crawl from first entrance to final, croaking flop into the trash heap. Barton's Willie is a relentlessly reptilian performance which effectively counterpoints Winnie's unsinkable bright chatter. Rude Guerrilla has made a ballsy choice for an inaugural production and a bold entrance upon the local scene in pulling it off. I didn't think of Denny's once. Continues Fri. and Sat. at 8pm; Sundays at 7pm at the Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 714.409.9853. Thru December 6. $10-$12. |