Trad Alice Mgbe
From March 31 to April 10 at Teatro India, Nicoletta Braschi is Winnie, absolute and minimal lady of “Happy days” by Samuel Beckett, for director Andrea Renzi, a Melampo and Fondazione Teatro Stabile of Turin production.
An intense challenge for Nicoletta Braschi on stage in role of Winnie, buried up until her waist in a heap of sand with her husband Willie. While the sand inexorably bury’s them, Winnie chats nonstop, in a non sensical alternation of moments that are the heart of the Beckett’s extraordinary exploration of life on the edge of madness.
Andrea Renzi, director and also a performer in the show, writes
«it’s with emotion and reverence that we approach Happy days, one of the greatest contemporary works that rightfully belongs to the standard of theatre of the short twentieth century. Vision and writing are one in this pièce and in the letters between Beckett and Alan Schneider, his referential director in the USA, we discover how the man of books, the novelist, poet, essayist is a stage man, deep down, attentive to the details of the scenographic materials, lights and intensely involved in the mysterious art of acting in a theatre that offers itself as very precise partitions for the actors and escapes directors “creative” rewriting.
We dedicated a first phase to studying the score without interpretive hypothesis. Respecting the author’s transcripts and moving in the margins defined by this narrow street, getting our work instruments in sync with the play seemed like a natural approach.
For Beckett Happy days meant, after years of voluntary linguistic exile, a return to the mother tongue. We found it useful to confront the English text and the French version to get a better adhesion with Carlo Fruttero’s Italian version.
When Beckett, in response to Schneider that asked him suggestions regarding the tone of a line in the first act, answered that the issue is the tone, he invites us to measure the subtlety and to adventure the nuance and he indicates the path to auto discipline, that is made of many possibilities.
There are numerous references to theatre in script: “strange sensation that someone is watching me” says the protagonist, asking herself even about the parasol that always returns to the same position, the bell that can be interpreted as a signal to whom is on stage, the operetta as a shared memory between the couple, Winnie and Willie, the blank memories and tricks.
We highlighted this line. The scene marks that we chose, a hill and a screen, declare themselves in all their artificiality and the costumes and the lights, in filigree, all recall show business: shoulder pads with paillette and top hat and bicolored shoes, an apron, a spotlight».
Happy days by Samuel Beckett, first published in New York 1961, was staged in a world premiere at Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on September 17, 1961 directed by Alan Schneider and played by Ruth White. A year later it was performed at the Royal Court in London, directed by George Devine while the role of protagonist was entrusted to Brenda Bruce. By the end of 1962 Beckett finished the French translation of “Happy days” and proposed it to director Roger Blin, whom staged it with actress Madeleine Renaud. Happy days was presented in Italy by Teatro Stabile of Turin and directed by Roger Blin. The show, performed by Laura Adani, was staged at Gobetti Theatre on April 2, 1965.
INFO TEATRO INDIA
Lungotevere Vittorio Gassman (già Lungotevere dei Papareschi) – Roma
Theatre promotion office of Roma: tel. 06.684.000.346 – www.teatrodiroma.net
showtime: every evening at 9 pm on 3 – 8 – 10 April 7 pm Mondays closed
The show lasts an hour and a half plus an interval.
