i’m going to quote my own twitter feed on this one: (insert comment about hubris in blogging here)

Happy Days at Cal Shakes: Beckett’s quiet desperation punctuated by the crunchcrunch of someone in the third row eating entire bag of chips.

i’m not sure that beckett was meant for outdoor theatre. i’m also not sure i was meant for beckett. i found his plays life-changing when i was in college in the same way that Thoreau and Emerson were life-changing when i first encountered them in high school (or Douglas Adams when i discovered Hitchhiker’s Guide in the 6th grade). when you go back to revisit it later, it’s not the same. the actress playing Winnie was tremendous, and holy shit how difficult would it be to perform a 90 minute monologue while buried up to your waist in dirt but still, i found myself totally unable to stick with the play, and instead wondering whether beckett actively or only incidentally hated his audience.