Cal Shakes Review: Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days"

I'm wondering if this year's dramatic theme is "strange lack of sympathetic characters" or "urge to slap characters silly and tell them to get over themselves". I can tell that I'm supposed to appreciate Beckett's Happy Days as a deeply meaningful and symbolic presentation of the ways people trap themselves and are trapped into meaningless ritual, but ... what do you do when your response to what is, essentially, a full length monologue is to want to scream at the character to just shut up already? Ah well, the last play of the season is A Midsummer Night's Dream and I anticipate enjoying it thoroughly.

I really do like being exposed to a wide variety of more modern (and yet classic) playwrights, and I understand that not everyone will be tuned in to every play in the season. But I find myself longing for characters I'm willing to make some emotional investment in.