Scottish star to be buried up to neck for 'luminous' Beckett play
The production will be performed at Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Siobhán Redmond is to star in a new production of an iconic Samuel Beckett play - in which she spends the entire show buried from the waist down.
The production of Happy Days, written in 1960, is a new addition to the 75th anniversary programme for Pitlochry Festival Theatre, under artistic director Alan Cumming.
Redmond will play Winnie - one of two characters in the play - who is buried up to her waist in the first act and is later buried further, up to her neck, as she chats to her husband, Willie.
A comic meditation on the human spirit, Happy Days, directed in Pitlochry by Roxana Silbert, is a renowned masterpiece that helped secure Beckett the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
Over the years, the role of Winnie has been played by Felicity Kendal, Fiona Shaw, Dianne Wiest, Maxine Peake, Juliet Stevenson and Lisa Dwan.
Redmond has starred as Anne in the BBC comedy series Two Doors Down, and also became a new incarnation of the Rani, a villainous character in the long-running Doctor Who, originally portrayed on television by Kate O'Mara, who had died earlier that year. Her version of the character was featured in BBC-licensed audio dramas by Big Finish Productions including The Rani Elite and Planet of the Rani.
She appeared as lead role Gruach in the National Theatre of Scotland and Royal Shakespeare Company premiere production of David Greig’s Dunsinane in 2010, also directed by Ms Silbert.
Ms Silbert said: "Samuel Beckett’s luminous Happy Days is a play of contradictions: biting and tender; profound and funny; epic and intimate. It's also very timely to explore how our heroine Winnie navigates her hopeless condition with relentless optimism. And so it is that I am thrilled to bring this brilliant classic to the iconic Pitlochry stage in Alan Cummings first season.
“A great play needs a great performer and I'm really excited to be reuniting with the extraordinary Siobhan Redmond to explore Winnie's resilience and humanity in this unexpectedly uplifting masterpiece.”
Last month, a production of another Beckett favourite, Waiting for Godot, was performed at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, starring Matthew Kelly and George Costigan.
The production is part of the inaugural full programme by artistic director Mr Cumming as artistic director, which opens in May with the Scottish premiere of the Tony and Olivier award winning musical Once.
Also part of the new season’s programme is Finn den Hertog’s new imagining of a Shakespearean classic in Lear, with Maureen Beattie in the title role and a production of musical My Fair Lady, in which Cumming will play Henry Higgins.
The host of the US version of The Traitors will also reunite with Shirley Henderson - almost 40 years after performing with her in children’s TV series The Shadow of the Stone - for a new staging of A History of Paper, directed by Andrew Panton.
Happy Days will run at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 18 September to 10 October.
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