THEATRE REVIEW:

“HAPPY DAYS” at the La Jolla Playhouse & “7 BLOWJOBS” at the Sledgehammer Theatre

KPBS AIRDATE: September 4, 1996

If you’re a lover of language, listen up. You only have a little more time to catch two plays that make a ritual of the spoken word, that invigorate and elevate the cliché of everyday speech to an art form.

First, “Happy Days,” by the Nobel Prize-winning Samuel Beckett, whose plays have a long-standing reputation for being bleak, esoteric and bizarre.

The La Jolla Playhouse hazards a journey into the rarefied world of Beckett, with its minimal emphasis on the traditional elements of plot, setting and character. In his work, Beckett creates a chilling portrait of the static experience of waiting, remembering, and struggling with a nagging sense of futility. Maybe it isn’t for everyone. But if you hang with it, lose yourself in it, there’s a lot there to stimulate and move you.

First performed in New York in 1961, “Happy Days” is still nervously funny and ultimately unnerving, with profound messages cloaked in its halting, nonlinear, vacuous monologue. When we first meet Winnie, she’s buried up to her waist in a huge mound of dirt. On the other side of the brown, barren hump, almost completely out of sight, is Willie, who says little but symbolizes much.

Winnie keeps up a steady stream of conversation, making her way through a day whose beginning and end are marked by an ear-shattering buzzer. It’s some sort of purgatory, real or imagined -- the confinement of a society, or a lifetime, or a marriage. In a frightening way, Winnie is heroic, as she cheerfully chats on, persevering in the face of the void. By the second act, she is neck deep in it, reduced to just a talking head, stopping only momentarily to look wistfully back, before she forges fearlessly on.

The award-winning New York actress Ruth Maleczech is luminous as Winnie, with her halo of orange, finger-in-the-socket hair and her singsong voice of upbeat resignation. Director Robert Woodruff has reined in his customary outrageousness, remaining faithful to Beckett’s intention and his detailed directions. The white-hot, glaring light, the jarring sound, the enigma of it all, can be thoroughly engaging -- if you, like Winnie, have the courage and the stamina to go on.

Another playwright who hangs on the spoken word, in all its degraded glory, is New Yorker Mac Wellman, whose “7 Blowjobs” is making a hilarious comeback at Sledgehammer Theatre, which staged its world premiere five years ago. The play is less prickly and provocative than its title would suggest. It’s a political satire, drenched in self-righteous, convoluted, conservative political patois.

A bumbling, idiotic senator, flawlessly played once again by Doug Jacobs, gets a series of unimaginable photos, that none of his staff knows what to do with -- not the drooling Bruce, the jealous Eileen, or the pert receptionist Dot -- except try to imagine how those people got all those parts in all those obscene places. They get little help from the hypocritical televangelist Tom, hysterically recreated by Brian Salmon. The cast is uniformly strong, with the most adorable new addition being Sarah Abramson as the street-smart Dot.

Once again, the design work is terrific. Scott Feldsher’s direction is slick, suggestive and precise; everyone goes over the top, but they’re clearly getting off on it, and so should you.

I'm Pat Launer, KPBS radio.

©1996 Patté Productions Inc.