For Immediate Release
December 23, 2025
Press Contact: Michael Kyrioglou
michael.kyrioglou@gmail.com
Washington Stage Guild’s 40th Season Continues With
Samuel Beckett’s Existential Classic HAPPY DAYS
Alan Wade Returns to Direct Founding Company Members
Lynn Steinmetz and Bill Largess Starting Saturday, January 31, 2026
Washington, DC–-The Washington Stage Guild continues its 2025-2026 season with a return to famed playwright Samuel Beckett and his 1961 classic Happy Days, named “one of the 40 best plays of all time” by The Independent. Founding Company Member Lynn Steinmetz plays Winnie along with Artistic Director/Founding Company Member Bill Largess as her husband Willie, directed by Alan Wade. Performances begin January 30 with three Pay-What-You-Can previews and run until February 22, 2026 at the Washington Stage Guild’s home, The Undercroft Theatre in the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue, NW. Opening/Press performance is Sunday, February 1 at 2:30pm.
“That’s what I find wonderful, all comes back.” ― Winnie, Happy Days.
ABOUT THE PLAY:
Samuel Beckett’s critically acclaimed final full-length play, essentially a one-woman tragicomic monologue, has been a tour-de-force for many an actress since its 1961 premiere. Winnie, a woman in her 50s, is inexplicably buried waist-deep in a mound of scorched earth in a bleak landscape, while nearby, her husband Willie dozes. She spends her day going through familiar routines, endlessly chattering and reminiscing about better days almost as a vaudeville routine for one. Then a bell rings, and she starts again. Is she trapped in this cycle or free to leave? Beckett’s absurd satire about the human condition lets you ponder what it all means.
“Happy Days remains ONE OF THE MOST UNSETTLING AND UNFORGETTABLE PLAYS in the modern canon.” – The New York Times
“a STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL attempt to grapple with the fragility of time and the fleeting poetry of optimism” – ArtsHub.com
FROM DIRECTOR ALAN WADE
“I’ve read that the genesis of Happy Days was a friend’s suggestion to Beckett that after Endgame he write a happy play. Beckett’s response (Happy Days) is, well, characteristically, Beckett. I find Winnie to be both an individual woman and representative of humanity at large. She is a heroine doing her best against insurmountable odds, one of which is her husband, Willie. I’m approaching the play this time as a play about a marriage but, yes, with all of Beckett’s attendant interests.”
FROM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BILL LARGESS
“Stage Guild audiences have embraced Beckett’s thorny dark humor in the past, whether he was the author (Endgame) or character (in the play Sam & Dede). Revisiting Happy Days after so long seems like a perfect nod to our history in our fortieth season.”
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is widely recognized as one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett is most renowned for his play Waiting for Godot, which launched his career in theatre. He then went on to write numerous successful full-length plays, including Endgame in 1957, Krapp’s Last Tape in 1958, and Happy Days in 1960. He received his first commission for radio from the BBC in 1956 for All That Fall. This was followed by a further five plays for radio, including Embers, Words and Music and Cascando. Like no other dramatist before him, Beckett’s works capture the pathos and ironies of modern life yet still maintain his faith in man’s capacity for compassion and survival, no matter how absurd his environment may have become.
Washington Stage Guild previously produced Beckett’s play Happy Days in 1990.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The cast of Happy Days includes Bill Largess and Lynn Steinmetz. Bill Largess, a founding member of WSG, is the current Artistic Director. His WSG credits include Man & Superman, his own adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, as director, Murder in The Cathedraland Pygmalion, performing in an evening of Beckett plays at the 2000 International Beckett Festival, and appearing at nearly every D.C.-area theatre company, as well as nationally. His work has been nominated five times for Helen Hayes Awards. Lynn Steinmetz, is a founding member and the current Executive Director of the Washington Stage Guild, where audiences most recently saw her as Catherine Petkoff in Arms and the Man, various characters in The Good Doctor, and Kitty Warren in Mrs. Warren’s Profession (and years ago, her daughter Vivie). Over the years, Stage Guild audiences have known Lynn as various English ladies, Irish lasses, Southern belles, saucy maids, a queen or two, doting mothers, dotty mothers, a drunk chain-smoking sister, and a mischievous ghost. Over the past 40-something years, she has performed at several venues in the Washington– Baltimore area, including Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Olney Theatre Center, Round House Theatre, Everyman Theatre, Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, and others. Lynn studied at the Catholic University of America and The Juilliard School.
Happy Days is directed by Alan Wade, who previously directed several Stage Guild productions including the 1990 production of Beckett’s Happy Days featuring June Hansen, and more recently Endgame in 2023 featuring Bill Largess. Mr. Wade’s one-man show I, from the prose of Samuel Beckett premiered at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre in 1977 and was then performed in Baltimore and Boston. His latest audiobook narration for Audible is Watson and Holmes by E. B. Dawson.
The production team includes Megan Holden (Scenic Design), Marianne Meadows (Lighting Design), Cody Von Ruden (Costume Design), Marcus Darnley (Sound Design), Elaine Randolph (Production Stage Manager), and Luca Maggs (Assistant Stage Manager).
Presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. (www.concordtheatricals.com).
DATES & TICKETS
Happy Days by Samuel Beckett runs January 31 to February 22, 2026 with performances Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2:30pm & 8pm, and Sunday at 2:30pm. The run begins with two Pay-What-You-Can performances Saturday, January 31 at 2:30pm & 8pm (Pay What You Can tickets can be purchased for any cash price at the door beginning one hour prior to curtain). Opening/Press performance is Sunday, February 1 at 2:30pm.
All tickets are General Admission and are $60. Student Admission is half-price with a valid Student ID. Senior Citizens 65 years and up get $10 OFF General Admission Prices. Groups of 10 or more get half-price tickets.
NEW:
Special “Sweet 16” Discounted Tickets – Stage Guild is offering a limited amount of 16 tickets at the discounted price of $16 for each performance from February 1 thru February 22. Use the code SWEET16 (Pay-What-You-Can previews excluded as they are already discounted). Purchase at https://stageguild.org/buy-tickets/
ABOUT THE THEATRE
Founded in 1986 by a professional company of theatre artists dedicated to producing literate, challenging works in a collegial and supportive atmosphere, the Washington Stage Guild quickly established itself as an indispensable component of the D.C. area theatre scene; recognized as early as the end of the first season (1987) by The Washington Post. The ensemble theatre company’s acclaimed repertoire of neglected classics, unfamiliar works by familiar playwrights, and stimulating new plays from around the world is presented in a style that is the Guild’s own—direct and clear, with a strong commitment to adhering to the author’s intent.
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