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Blue Bridge’s Happy Days still smiling thanks to replacements

ONSTAGE What: Happy Days Where: Roxy Theatre, 2657 Quadra St. When: April 23, through May 5 Tickets: $20-$47 from bluebridgetheatre.

ONSTAGE

What: Happy Days
Where: Roxy Theatre, 2657 Quadra St.
When: April 23, through May 5
Tickets: $20-$47 from bluebridgetheatre.ca; by calling 250-382-3370 or in person at the Roxy Theatre box office

A popular theatre-world mantra (“The show must go on”) was put into practice by Victoria’s Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre, which overcame two obstacles for its season-opening production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days.

Lead actor Norah McLellan left the production late last month, two weeks before rehearsals were set to begin — a near-fatal blow, given that the bulk of the dialogue in Happy Days is spoken by Winnie, the character McLellan was hired to play. Her departure, for personal reasons, was compounded by the subsequent exit of director Don Shipley soon after.

A pair of stage veterans, in director Arne Zaslove and actor Donna Belleville, soon filled the open positions, and rehearsals (with Michael Armstrong in the role of Winnie’s husband, Willie) began immediately. Zaslove, who is based in Seattle, and Belleville, who lives in Ontario, have filled in more than admirably, under the circumstances.

“She is one of the finest actors I’ve ever worked with,” Zaslove said of his lead. “I’m telling you, she started out with this big load and she was lifting it off the page immediately. I’m serious. I’ve been in the business over 50 years and she is one of the best.”

Zaslove, an experienced actor, director and administrator, was an obvious choice. He has extensive previous experience with both Happy Days and Beckett, having spent three years with his own Floating Theater Company in Seattle staging only Beckett plays at one point. Belleville was facing a much steeper learning curve, but she was given assistance prior to rehearsals when Zaslove dug up one of his old working scripts of Happy Days (which he had directed twice previously) with annotation. Those notes wound up being helpful for all involved.

“I’ve always felt like a conductor, when I revisit Shakespeare,” Zaslove said. “And Beckett is the same thing. You find that these things have another layer to them. Beckett is like chamber music. He is so precise in everything he asks for.”

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Director Arne Zaslove speaks to Donna Belleville, who plays Winnie in the Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre production of Samuel BeckettÕs Happy Days. - Rebekah Johnson

His fascination with Beckett dates back to the early 1970s, when he played Clov in Endgame during his senior year at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. He later studied under Carlo Mazzone-Clementi at his Dell’Arte School of Mime and Comedy in California, before leaving school to be enrolled on a Fulbright Scholarship at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Zaslove would go on to serve as the artistic director of Montreal’s National Theatre School of Canada and teach theatre at New York University and the University of British Columbia.

His obsession with the Nobel Prize winner continued when he settled in Seattle. Zaslove said he once wrote to the playwright, asking for his permission to stage and film Happy Days outside, in the sand dunes located south of Eugene, Oregon (the pitch made sense, in that the absurdist drama about love, marriage and the search for meaning is staged with Winnie waist-deep in sand.)

Zaslove would have had a shot, were the letter addressed to anyone other than Beckett. The playwright responded kindly, but did not give permission to film the production — one of a never-ending string of denials Beckett issued before his death in 1989. Zaslove now understands why Beckett (and, following his death, his famously iron-clad estate) repeatedly denied licensing requests

“Beckett is so precise, and so sure of what he wants, that he writes it in the form of chamber music. So you do what he says. If there’s a pause, take the pause. If there’s a long pause, take a long pause.”

Zaslove took every nuance to heart while approaching Happy Days for Blue Bridge. The script calls for a specific kind of antique alarm bell, which plays a recurring role in the story. Having seen a version of Happy Days in which a clock radio was used — an experience from which he has yet to recover, Zaslove said with a laugh — he made the effort to acquire for the Blue Bridge run the precise type of alarm Beckett envisioned.

“You only have the liberty to do it the way he wrote it. You create within his structure — you don’t change anything.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com