The greatest show on earth: Juliet Stevenson stars as Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days - the 'summit' part for any actress
"Winnie is one of those parts, I believe," declared Peggy Ashcroft who took it on in 1975, "that actresses will want to play in the way that actors aim at Hamlet " a 'summit' part." Buried in scorched earth up to her waist in the first half and up to her neck in the second, the middle-aged housewife in Beckett's 1961 play Happy Days prattles away with dogged optimism to her mostly unseen and uncommunicative husband, …