Happiness is … having overexcited people in the foyer before the performance starts, and not being sure if, in fact, the performance has already started. Happiness is having to do a collective breath and a bit of a knee bounce to loosen you up before even being allowed into the auditorium. Happiness is anticipation. Happiness is wondering what you’ve let yourself in for, and being hugely relieved that you haven’t gone to this play (is it a play? It doesn’t really have a narrative. I suppose it would be more accurately described as a performance.) by yourself, because breaking the fourth wall can feel a little stressful unless you’ve got company.
Happiness purports to explore the idea of happiness, in a collection of scenes that don’t have a great deal to do with each other (aside from being about happiness, obv). Happiness is worrying at the start that you may have inadvertently allowed yourself to be indoctrinated into a cult, and then being a bit sad when the culty bit is over, because it was really engaging to watch two people journey along a roll of wallpaper metaphorically representing life, thinking that if they do whatever the cult leader (or life coach, self-help book, whatever) advises then they will be happy, when all it does is lay unbearable pressure and guilt about what you’re not doing. Happiness is not striving. Happiness is not about having all the cool stuff, and knowing all the cool things, and getting to a certain point at the end of the wallpaper roll. Happiness is not a destination, because when you get there all you’re left with is a wallpapery sausage roll of a dream.
Happiness is some nice ideas that don’t feel like they’ve particularly been developed. Happiness is feeling alive when the actors come into the audience, but it being over too soon. Happiness is live music, and an effects pedal. Happiness would have been not hearing about the musician’s dextrous toes after the show is over. Happiness is unbelievably awkward when there’s a weird bit about how happiness isn’t really about the search for sex, when there’s a theatre half full of school kids and a man stripping on the stage. Happiness is pretty funny at that point though.
Happiness is rolling around in torn up newspaper. Happiness is watching it be thrown in the air, and fall like blossom from a tree. Happiness is simplicity. Happiness is listening to the actor with the magnificent moustache read out post-it notes of the audience’s opinion of what happiness is (and what an Oxford result it is: Mozart, poetry, some more middle class but quite nice things that I can’t remember, Jack Russells…). Happiness is going up on stage at the end and throwing paper about. Happiness is going for a glass of wine afterwards and not really knowing where to start. Happiness is… ★★★☆☆ Deborah Sims 3rd March 2016
