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| Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy. |
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| Jessica Tandy. |
These short Beckett works were staged as part of a Beckett
festival at the Forum, when that lovely theatre (now the Mitzi E. Newhouse
Theatre) was threatened with destruction to make it over into a movie
theatre/museum. The conversion never took place, largely because of the public
outcry. The plays were smoothly staged there by Alan Schneider, then America’s
foremost Beckett director. They seemed, under the circumstances, a fitting
tribute to man’s indomitable will to survive in the face of life’s brutal
realities.
The minimalist character of Beckett’s dramaturgy, as well as
his power to convey great truths in a devastatingly understated way, was highly
regarded by the critics. John Simon expostulated that Beckett’s “is a drama
reduced beyond the absurd to the molecular structure of our condition, to atoms
of suffering and laughter. Beckettian man is laughing through his cursing and
weeping; cursing God, bewailing his birth, laughing at himself.”
“Happy Days” was first seen locally in 1965 at the Cherry
Lane Theatre. It quickly become a lodestone for leading character actresses
seeking a challenging role. Winnie (Jessica Tandy) is an aging lady buried up
to her waist (and, later, her neck) in a mound of sand. The image is of death
creeping up on her as she blithely speaks on and on, surrounded by her few
necessities and a similarly failing, flailing old husband, Willie (Hume Cronyn,
Tandy’s real-life spouse).
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| Hume Cronyn. |
Winnie is intended for a tour de force performer. The
critics took pains to compare Tandy to her predecessors in the role. They
showed great respect for her work, although several spoke of an uncomfortable stridency
in her pitch. Hers was not, perhaps, the definitive interpretation but it was
masterful nonetheless, “lean with the frustrations of memory,” said Clive
Barnes. She made Winnie “a gentle woman with a lightness of touch, sensibility,
gallantry, and a clear, fluty voice that barely covers panic.”
The second piece, “Act without Words,” was a 10-minute,
one-man pantomime for Hume Cronyn in which, dressed in a white suit, a man
grapples valiantly with a frustrating series of blows, kicks, and deprivations
from powers outside himself until he seems to lie on death’s doorstep. Cronyn’s
agility was applauded, but the piece failed to maintain continued interest. Cronyn also acted "Krapp's Last Tape" during the Beckett festival.
Tandy won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance,
which included her work in Beckett’s “Not I” on the bill with "Krapp's Last Tape."