Theater e r

So I saw Beckett's Happy Days yesterday at BAM in Brooklyn. I'll admit, it was hard. During intermission I debated going into the ladies' to cry but composed myself and went downstairs for a coffee instead. I could go on and on just about the set, about Fiona Shaw and how incredibly funny she is, about the theatre itself... but Winnie. She is so heartbreakingly beautiful. I searched for reviews to commiserate with others about this. You can tell the misogynists, the untrustworthy types, by how they receive her character. She is so easily dismissable as a hysteric, "babbling away" to the man "compelled to remain in her presence," but that precisely misses the point. It's disingenuous anyway - the kind of thing that could only be said behind her back - because for an hour and a half we were all fixed on her words and on her face just like she was fixed in the earth.