Remarkable Player In Remarkable Play

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31109, 12 July 1966, Page 18

Remarkable Player In Remarkable Play

A bemused but enthusiastic audience applauded Pat Evison’s virtuoso performance of Winnie in Samuel Beckett's “Happy Days” last night at On Stage Theatre. Pat Evison’s Winnie was truly remarkable in many ways. One felt always that one had met her before in many different situations. Her face was a flexible instrument on which her thoughts played with great sensitivity. Samuel Beckett’s play is concerned with man’s bondage to material things, his underlying wish to be free of them and his overwhelming will to accept this bondage. Winnie speaks of the sadness after a song. This expresses eloquently the underlying feeling of the play. Pat Evison held the audience in an intimate grip from the awakening of the play to the emotionally wracking finish. The audience laughed and grew sad with her in the first act and in the second

one seemed to be no longer a part of the audience but was tied neck deep in the mound of earth with Winnie, trembling with unknown fear, screaming, crying, laughing sadly. This was a remarkable performance of a remarkable play. That one woman can hold the attention of an audience for two hours sunk to her waist in a mound of earth for the first hour and to her neck for the second is an incredible feat and last night Pat Evison did far more than just hold the audience’s attention. So much of what came over was never written in the script. Willie, the man behind the mound, was brought convincingly to life by Stewart Robertson.

On Stage Theatre is to be congratulated on its foresight in inviting this artist to present “Happy Days.” The season will continue until Thursday night