About Samuel Beckett | About The Play | The Cast | The Crew | The Director | Design Team |
| Characters | Influences | Special Event |
| Characters | Influences | Special Event |
Winnie is one of those parts, I believe, that actresses will want to play in the way that actors aim at Hamlet – a 'summit' part.
Dame Peggy Ashcroft
Characters
WINNIE
”Winnie is a "woman of about fifty", played by Bette Carlson in our production, who passes her time between "the bell for waking and the bell for sleep" by following a very exact daily routine. in Act 1, after she methodically removes the items from her bag— a comb, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of medicine, lipstick, a nail file, a pistol and a music box. The routine is raised to the level of ritual. Beckett’s instructions to Billie Whitelaw, (Beckett's muse and favorite actor) in 1979 emphasize this:
The bag is all she has – look at it with affection … From the first you should know how she feels about it … When the bag is at the right height you peer in, see what things are there and then get them out. Peer, take, place. Peer, take, place. You peer more when you pick things up than when you put them down.
Winnie is a heroine, a courageous optimist. Robert Brustein called her a "hopeful futilitarian" — but the available sources of her optimism are being used up and she has to work harder and harder to keep up her positive front which is already wafer-thin when we first meet her. Her effortful optimism is expressed in her carefully precise, self-correcting refrain, “Oh this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day. After all. So far.”
Beckett described her as being "like a bird" and she makes every effort to rise above her extreme predicament. She never questions or explains why she finds herself in the predicament she is in— most of us never understand how we wind up in a rut, or stuck in the mud to use similar earthy metaphors— but her dream is that she will "simply float up into the blue … And that perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all round me and let me out."
WILLIE
Willie, Winnie's husband, is a man of “about sixty”. An unknown condition hampers Willie's mobility. In marked contrast to Winnie, Willie is laconic in the extreme. Much of his dialogue consists of reading notices from his paper; his responses to Winnie – when he can find the resources to respond at all – are terse and barely communicative. His is Winnie's only companion and solace.
Willie lives in a tunnel, mostly outside the range of Winnie's view, only occasionally surfacing. There is a childlike, if not exactly an innocent, quality to him and there are many times in the play you might think Winnie was talking to a young boy rather than a grown man. Winnie also serves as his protector, the custodian of "Brownie" the revolver she keeps safe from him.
”Winnie is a "woman of about fifty", played by Bette Carlson in our production, who passes her time between "the bell for waking and the bell for sleep" by following a very exact daily routine. in Act 1, after she methodically removes the items from her bag— a comb, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of medicine, lipstick, a nail file, a pistol and a music box. The routine is raised to the level of ritual. Beckett’s instructions to Billie Whitelaw, (Beckett's muse and favorite actor) in 1979 emphasize this:
The bag is all she has – look at it with affection … From the first you should know how she feels about it … When the bag is at the right height you peer in, see what things are there and then get them out. Peer, take, place. Peer, take, place. You peer more when you pick things up than when you put them down.
Winnie is a heroine, a courageous optimist. Robert Brustein called her a "hopeful futilitarian" — but the available sources of her optimism are being used up and she has to work harder and harder to keep up her positive front which is already wafer-thin when we first meet her. Her effortful optimism is expressed in her carefully precise, self-correcting refrain, “Oh this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day. After all. So far.”
Beckett described her as being "like a bird" and she makes every effort to rise above her extreme predicament. She never questions or explains why she finds herself in the predicament she is in— most of us never understand how we wind up in a rut, or stuck in the mud to use similar earthy metaphors— but her dream is that she will "simply float up into the blue … And that perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all round me and let me out."
WILLIE
Willie, Winnie's husband, is a man of “about sixty”. An unknown condition hampers Willie's mobility. In marked contrast to Winnie, Willie is laconic in the extreme. Much of his dialogue consists of reading notices from his paper; his responses to Winnie – when he can find the resources to respond at all – are terse and barely communicative. His is Winnie's only companion and solace.
Willie lives in a tunnel, mostly outside the range of Winnie's view, only occasionally surfacing. There is a childlike, if not exactly an innocent, quality to him and there are many times in the play you might think Winnie was talking to a young boy rather than a grown man. Winnie also serves as his protector, the custodian of "Brownie" the revolver she keeps safe from him.