Happy Days are here again as Beckett festival returns

THE second Happy Days International Beckett Festival, devoted to Irish literary giant, Samuel Beckett, is on this week in Enniskillen. Beckett lived in the Fermanagh town during his teenage years, when he was a boarding student at Portora Royal School.

The festival has two new productions of Beckett’s seminal play, Endgame, the first by daring Sligo company, Blue Raincoat, the second by acclaimed Australians, Wit’s End. Elsewhere, the festival examines the inspiration the Dublin writer took from his favourite literary work, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, with excursions to the local Marble Arch Caves and Lough Erne for site-specific performances of Dante’s text.

In addition, there are art-installations by Robert Wilson, Neil Jordan, Tomoko Mukaiyama and Jean Kalman, all free to the public, and guest speakers including Clive James and Frank Skinner. Alan Milligan’s bronze sculptures of a 32-piece chess set, based on images from Beckett’s work, will be on show throughout the town.

Also, well-known actors (among them Juliet Stephenson, Diana Quick, Neil Pearson, and Adrian Dunbar) will narrate adaptations of Beckett’s short stories in intimate and surprising locations.

Happy Days founder and curator, Seán Doran, has added fun and high jinks. This year’s ‘Fooling Around Beckett’ strand has a variety of light-hearted comic fare. Last year, there was inspired looniness. “We offered people Beckett haircuts,” says Doran. “We gave all the hairdressers photos of Beckett from each decade, from the 1920s right through to the 1980s. So you could go in and pick whichever style you wanted. And we made up sandwiches — like the ‘Krapp Sandwich’, which was banana and Nutella. It helped people in the town to enter into the spirit of it all.”

Beckett may have approved. Nobody mixed the low brow and the high brow with his gusto. The slapstick of a man slipping on a banana peel is an integral part of Krapp’s Last Tape. Nevertheless, Beckett remains a daunting figure — aloof and remote. Doran says the festival debunks that reputation to make Beckett accessible.

“Even within the arts community, Beckett is on the periphery,” he says. “It’s not only in the wider community. He’s been placed on a pedestal and he can seem somewhat removed and alien. The word ‘difficult’ even comes in. The ethos of the festival is, in part, to break through that. I certainly feel that his work has a comedic appeal, albeit in a black sense. That black comedy is something all of us on the island can relate to. But, also, it’s the humanity in Beckett that can be so touching if you’re in an intimate space with him.”

Doran is a director of considerable distinction, having helmed large arts festivals everywhere from Belfast to Perth, Australia. The Derryman’s reputation has been staked on creative gambles, not the least of them his decision to perform Wagner’s The Valkyrie at the Glastonbury rock music festival, when Doran was artistic director of the English National Opera.

After spending a year immersing himself in Beckett’s work in 2006, Doran toyed with creating a festival dedicated to the artist. Once he learned that the writer had spent his teenage years in Enniskillen, Happy Days began to take shape. Did he have any fears that the link between Enniskillen and Beckett might seem tenuous? “Certainly, with Beckett, and with the Beckett industry, the story goes that the light bulb goes on for him in Trinity,” says Doran. “And Beckett certainly didn’t talk about his youth much, although he never talked much about Ireland, either. But, certainly, before the festival came into existence, it was a thought: ‘Is this a tenuous link?’ Unquestionably, it’s a device. I’ve been working away from the North for many years and, for me, it was a way of giving something back, having experienced 30 years in the business, but also knowing that, post-conflict, a world-class festival of this European kind is itself a way of moving forward.”

“In the Republic, with Galway, Kilkenny, and Cork, you have international arts festivals, but that hasn’t happened in the North, because of the marching season. So, I think there’s an opportunity for that to happen there and it has the potential to become a destination festival. And it has to do, because there aren’t the figures here to sustain it. Last year, 70% of our audience came from outside Fermanagh and 40% came from the South, which we were so pleased with.”

This year’s festival has suffered a few small blows. In recent weeks, Fiona Shaw and Winona Ryder have pulled out of appearing, while an installation by acclaimed theatre-maker, Romeo Castellucci, has also fallen through. Castellucci will be in next year’s programme instead, says Doran, and, with characteristic enthusiasm, he is previewing not just Castellucci’s visit in 2014, but a 2015 project as well.

Doran’s enthusiasm should stand Happy Days in good stead, as should his ability to dream up the lovely little conceits. For instance, this year there’s a rehearsed reading of Waiting For Godot, in which Pozzo and Lucky (Aaron Monaghan and Mark Lambert) will literally meet Vladimir and Estragon (Aboriginal Australian actors Ernie Dingo and Aaron Pederson) for the first time on stage.

It’s little fancies like this that can distinguish a festival and, happily, Happy Days has no small amount of them.

nHappy Days International Beckett Festival runs Aug 22-26, www.happy-days-enniskillen.com