I’ve been impressed by earlier productions of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days – by Belinda Giblin in a close-up staging at Sydney’s Old Fitzroy in 2021; by Julie Forsythe (twice) in 2009 and in 1989 – but this staging, driven by Pamela Rabe’s astonishing performance as the half-buried Winnie, delivers something palpably more.

Trapped centre stage, Rabe’s Winnie gives us nothing less than what one imagines the final seconds of life might be like, when the neurons are frantically discharging their sparks one final time. It is impressive, yes, but it is also moving.

Markus Hamilton and Pamela Rabe in Happy Days. Photo © Brett Boardman

In this Sydney Theatre Company production co-directed by Rabe with lighting and set designer Nick Schlieper (the first STC Happy Days since Ruth Cracknell starred in 1991), Winnie sits buried to the bosom in a huge grey carbuncle. The colour is vaguely lunar. The texture suggests it may have once been liquid.

Behind it, a blank scrim, like an empty movie screen. Winnie’s dress – designed by Mel Page – is suggestive of the period in which Beckett was...