Theatre: Review - Happy everyday! Lion and Unicorn

Published: 3 June 2010
by ALISTAIR KLEEBAUER

JAAN Tatte is an emerging playwright in Estonia and after bringing his debut play The Highway Crossing to the London stage in 2006, he now repeats the feat with Happy Everyday!, which reveals that our Baltic brothers have a bizarre sense of humour. Fred knows his wife is returning from a business trip but when she does, he is met with the revelation that she has fallen in love with a man she met on her flight.

"An Estonian psychological puzzle comedy"

by Aline Waites for remotegoat on 28/05/10

The Giant Olive Company continue to find unusual items for their theatre. This play begins like a simple French sex comedy - and it turns into a surrealist dream. Freddie sits on the striped sofa reading while Anna, the beautiful neighbour eyes him - obviously fancying him. He takes no notice. When the wife, Annette, arrives from a trip abroad, Anna makes it seem as if she has been having an affair with the husband, but Annette is unperturbed, she takes her husband for granted. Besides, she is excited - she is in love. 'Of course you are' says the husband, 'with me'. 'No' she says, 'with somebody else. You should be happy for me'. The husband finds it difficult to rejoice, especially when he finds that she has invited the new lover to move in with them and cannot understand Freddie's dismay at the idea.

Happy Everyday!

By Jaan Tätte, translated by Triin Sinissaar
Stage Spell Theatre Company
Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Review by Howard Loxton (2010)

Jaan Tätte is an Estonian actor, singer and songwriter who has had a number of plays produced in Estonia and this British premier is his second play seen here. It is a wry look at marriage, fidelity and longing that could be set in a bourgeois household anywhere. Designer Cara Newman has given it a sparsely furnished room of pristine Syrie Maugham elegance and whiteness with a hint of Alice in Wonderland with oval shuttered windows and a series of plaques with what look like red peppers on them as decoration that reflects the teetering between naturalism and fantasy that marks Liisa Smith’s production.