by Hugh Hunter

If you think "Happy Days" (1961) by Samuel Beckett has anything in common with the American sitcom of the same name, you are in for a rude awakening. Now running at Quintessence Theatre in Mt. Airy, the play is vintage absurdist theater, more interested in metaphor than storytelling.

Winnie and Willie are a middle-aged married couple. In act one, Winnie is up to her waist in a mound of gravel 15 feet high. Behind her is an impossibly luminous blue sky. She has a parasol, and Willie wears a boater, so that director Alexander Burns’ set looks like a cross between a blighted beach resort and purgatory.

Only a harsh, clanging bell signals day from night. Winnie keeps saying, "It's another happy day," but you see no basis for it. She religiously plays with articles from her handbag. Her life is now one of ceremonial remembrance, which includes fractured quotes drawn from 2000 years of Western literature.

It is still "another happy day" in act two, but Winnie's situation has worsened. She is now up to her neck in rubble and no longer has access to her cherished bag. Willie's confiscated handgun lies off to the side. As an unexplored object, you might say only the handgun has a future.

Winnie often calls out to her Willie (Gregory Isaac), whom we seldom see or hear. Getting a rise out of him is Winnie's ongoing concern. In act one we only glimpse Willie behind the mound, reading a newspaper. (A "willie" is British slang word for penis).

But Willie comes alive after Winnie asks him what a hog is. "It is a castrated pig reared for slaughter.” Willie crawls out late in act two — he never rises — and tries to climb the mound. Is he trying to reach Winnie or the gun, you wonder, while Winnie observes he is not the crawler he used to be.

Apart from the startling staging as metaphor for an exhausted civilization, the heavy hitting in "Happy Days" falls on the actress playing Winnie. It is up to her to make something out of Winnie's affirmation of life.

E. Ashley Izard passes no judgment, but with only voice and face at her disposal she comes up with a wealth of moods.  Winnie smiles fondly over memories, recalls old squabbles, pouts and puts on airs, has moments of doubt and is sexual with Willie — seductive, coy, prudish and taunting.

But is Winnie's affirmation in any way supportable?  When Winnie watches Willie crawl, is the gleam in her eye affection or sadism? Is her contentment rooted in the inability to recognize futility? If you accept "Happy Days" on its own terms, it yields its rewards, but Beckett gives both his star actress and the playgoer a big hill to climb.

Quintessence Theatre is located at 7137 Germantown Ave.  "Happy Days" will run through June 26. Tickets available at 215-987-4450 or online at QuintessenceTheatre.org.