Last year the Washington Shakespeare Company got a new home at Artisphere. This season, they’ve got a new name: WSC Avant Bard. The first offering of their season is a very pretty production of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days,” in which the main character, Winnie (Delia Taylor), is high above the audience, buried up to her chest not in sand or dirt, but in yards and yards of what looks like patterned silk.

Yes, there are pebbles here and there, nesting in the material, but the general effect is that Winnie is wearing a very long ball gown. It’s a curious choice on director Jose Carrasquillo’s part, since Winnie is generally considered to be the embodiment of human nature bravely holding off the vast earth threatening to engulf her, not a grand dame gamely but elegantly losing her purchase on living space.