Happy Days review – Beckett’s bewitching heroine buries her existential fears

Pitlochry Festival theatre
In what feels now like a premonition of the climate crisis, Siobhán Redmond is compelling as the everywoman putting on a brave face in an unforgiving landscape

Samuel Beckett’s play is always staged with a radiant brightness. It is hot enough to set a parasol alight. If, on its premiere in 1961, that resonated with audience anxieties about nuclear Armageddon, in 2026, it feels like a premonition of the climate crisis. Is this how it ends?

Emma Bailey’s set is a dune of bleached-white sand, clumps of sea grass forcing their way through into a scorched environment, baked by Colin Grenfell’s lighting. When Forbes Masson crawls out of his hole as Willie, keeping his back to us, he reveals nothing more than his neck and shoulders, raw and sunburnt, his scarred head protected by a handkerchief (used).