Project Arts Centre, Dublin Previews until Nov 8 Opens Nov 9-20 7.30pm 12-22 projectartscentre.ie 01-8819613

“Another heavenly day,” approves Winnie. It’s an unusually sunny outlook for anyone condemned to live in a Beckett play, particularly when Winnie begins it buried up to her waist in a mound of earth. But Winnie is forever caught between unbridled optimism and irrefutable desolation, stubbornly inscribing her existence into a punishing earth through daily ritual and upbeat prattle, while her husband supportively reads the newspaper.

Perhaps Corn Exchange, staging the play in a co-production with Lyon’s Théâtre Nationale Populaire, have found a neat metaphor for Irish theatre makers today. Buried up to their necks in impediments, it looks like they can’t go on . . . they’ll go on.

What else is there to find in Winnie’s predicament? Reunited with her long- separated collaborator, Clara Simpson (left), and company regular Andrew Bennett, director Annie Ryan seems unlikely to employ her trademark commedia. But every Beckett play has the appeal of an unbroken code, the tickle of an unresolved riddle.

Winnie has never been given much room to manoeuvre, but a company like Corn Exchange knows that it can’t stop her trying.

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