Q&A: Actress Fiona Shaw on Beckett's 'Happy Days'

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FIONA SHAW has had it up to here. The seasoned stage performer — but best known for her portrayal of the nasty Aunt Petunia in the "Harry Potter" movies — will star in Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days," in which she spends the first half of the play buried up to her waist and the second half up to her neck. The character in question is Winnie, a chatty lady who is virtually ignored by her husband, Willie, and tries to make the best of her crippled state.

» EXPRESS: I saw some stills of what the production looks like and the first thing that struck me is that it looks rather uncomfortable physically. Is that the case and how did that help you prepare for your role?
» SHAW: You can get used to anything. I rehearsed with very heavy sandbags all around me — that got me used to that feeling of gravity. Because that's very important — she feels that she's held in that way. She says without it she's float up in the air. She's very aware of being kept down.

» EXPRESS: How did that change the way you perform?
» SHAW: The performance is based in discomfort — it's entirely uncomfortable for me and for her. [Laughs] For many people, it heightens their sense of claustrophobia about themselves. Most people find the second half very hard.

» EXPRESS: Could you describe Winnie and what resonates about her to you?
» SHAW: The reason why she is so engaging to an audience — despite not being wholly in the world or not entirely having the use of her limbs, despite not being able to finish phrases or remember any complete memory — she's so optimistic in her enthusiasm for each thing. She launches into that this clash between enthusiasm and despair seems to launch a rather charming outpouring by this women. And that's really who she is — she's you or I coping very well from the circumstances.

» EXPRESS: What kinds of emotions does she draw since she is a character that is so charming but is literally buried up to her neck?
» SHAW: Remarkably, I think the play doesn't function the way a normal play does, where you might have a goodie and a baddie. Beckett has done something astonishing in that he's written a play almost without characters. He's written a play that doesn't seem to be going anywhere — and the language on the page is very abstract. In fact, the more you play it the more highly realistic it is.

We had a fantastic time with the audience laughing from the very start with the absurdity of the recognition of someone saying what a lovely day it is when they are buried up to their waist. But the audience loved the nonsensical situation that she is in.

I feel more and more, having done the play, that he wrote a play about a couple living in a house and he just took away the house. He wrote a play about a couple talking to each other, and he took away most of what they say to each other, leaving just the bare bones. So they are stuck in their relationship.

» EXPRESS: This play could be interpreted a lot of ways and be a metaphor for a lot of things. Is there an interpretation you are partial to?
» SHAW: Oh, no. Not at all. I don't think it's my job to interpret it. I think that the key for me has been the luck in discovering [the play], very late in the game by the way. We took a long time to rehearse it. I kept thinking "this is going nowhere, this is a very difficult play." And I find a lot of Beckett very boring when I see it, but to my astonishment the audience laughed immediately when we first previewed it. We began to see the play told us what it was rather than us telling the play what it was.

The other thing is that I'm from the same sort of world as Beckett. I come from outside Cork city and he was from outside Dublin city — so we're very much a rare form of Irish life in that it's not rural, there's not that kind of country, peasant humor that you get so much of in Irish plays. It's a city humor, a city accent, a city rhythm. I speak very like him, actually.
I think I had a head start; for a long time I started thinking "this woman is like my mother." (laughs) and I finally freed myself from that. And she's very much her own being now.

» EXPRESS: You've collaborated several times with Deborah Warner. Did you guys expect to do this play next?
» SHAW: We didn't at all. On the contrary, we were trying to do "Waiting for Godot." But the estate refused, as it always does, to grant women permission to play male roles. You know Beckett was very keen that women didn't play Godot — so they said if you want to play something else, do. So having been forgiven, as it were, from ten years ago — the estate was very upset at a production of Beckett that was in the west end — and for a long time sort of put a ban on us. Finally having the fatwa raised, there's not much of a repertoire left. But "Happy Days" was there — and I was against it feeling like I was too young for it actually. But then I thought maybe I'm not, maybe the point isn't about particularly older women but any woman.

» EXPRESS: Did you agree with Deborah immediately on a treatment?
» SHAW: Neither of us had an outset theory about the play. We could function like that because it would be like "fill in the blanks." It's really a kind of discovery. You start into the play. It's very hard to rehearse because it's very static and doesn't have any of the usual inventiveness you find in the scenes. In this you're very, very held by the actual raising of a glass on a certain line. It's staccato, like conducting to the beat of the language — the first ten minutes particularly. So there's very little freedom to discover anything about it, so it didn't charm me for a long, long time and I think Deborah was in despair with it actually.

And then we left rehearsal over the Christmas period and we went down to my country place where I'm speaking to you from now. We rehearsed in the hall of my house, and suddenly things began to shift. It became more bare. It wasn't until the very first preview when I thought "this is a very serious, rather awkward play" and I haven't been able to find it. And I started to perform it and the audience immediately started laughing — it seemed much nearer to stand-up comedy than anything else.

» EXPRESS: How did your interaction with you co-star change the play?
» SHAW: It is very important to Beckett that Willie is there. What's also very important to Beckett is that the audience doesn't relate to Willie the same way they relate to Winnie. He gives her the minimum and that's what one feels. He responds when she's desperate, he doesn't respond when she's not desperate. He doesn't respond enough to make a relationship, but he responds just enough for her to believe that she's still in a relationship. It's tiny, it's monosyllabic and he hardly ever replies. So it's kind of cruel, but of course that has a great humor in it too.

» Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW; opens Fri., through Nov. 29, $65; 202-467-4600. (Foggy Bottom)

Written by Express contributor Dan Miller
Photo by Hugo Glendinning