All must be ordered, parceled out, spooned carefully hour by hour, each thing in its time, on schedule, on cue, so no gap is left in which to die of sheer terror. Bring out the revolver-that ultimate reassurance. Read the “label” on the toothbrush.Ĭheck out the contents of the handbag. Winnie is clinging to sanity by going through life’s daily rituals, what’s left of them, under the broiling sun. Willie doesn’t always talk back, but he’s good for a grunt now and then and, on especially happy days, good for a word or even a complete sentence. Willie, husband or lover, more dead than alive, but there, behind Winnie’s sand heap and still breathing. And we’re off on one of Beckett’s most majestic, most enticing, most mysterious and anguishing plays. Begin your day, Winnie,” is more uncertain as she checks out the landmarks: her black handbag, her parasol. “Another heavenly day,” she says, with feeling. When the relentless bell wakes her at the start of day, she makes the best of it. And Winnie (Charlotte Rae) is already waist-deep in encroaching sand. It is Albee at his best: winking as he plays God and teases us with the summary dispatching of a tough old lady. “Sandbox” is an inspired curtain-raiser for the longer (though not long) “Happy Days.” Albee’s 15-minute wonder waltzes across the fourth wall on a whim and makes confetti of sanctimonious attitudinizing.
At the Mark Taper Forum where “Sandbox” and “Happy Days” constitute Round 2 of the “50/60 Vision” festival of “plays and playwrights that changed the theater” (there are 6 rounds, totaling 13 plays), it strikes this theatergoer as a cleverly ironic coupling. The difference is in how we, the audience, perceive the battle. What’s the difference if it comes as a result of global catastrophe or sly family imperatives? At first glance it may seem like a curious pairing: Edward Albee’s “The Sandbox” and Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days.” But wait a minute.ĭon’t both plays deal with survival? The snappy old lady in “The Sandbox” may be simply the butt of an impatient progenitor’s bad joke, and “Happy Days’ ” Winnie may be struggling against much more cataclysmic odds, but in the end they’re both after the same thing: warding off death.
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