Winnie
A woman of about fifty and the wife of Willie. Winnie is eternally optimistic and endlessly loquacious, often repeating the refrain "Oh this is a happy day" from which the play takes its name. In opposition to her optimism, the situation she finds herself is rather dire as she is, without explanation, buried up to her waist in a mound of sand and dirt. Nevertheless, her optimism is constant and she sincerely hopes to float away from her predicament. Furthermore, she seems to have obsessive tendencies as she religiously follows a daily routine. This involves removing a series of unrelated objects from her bags, all of which are exhausted or dilapidated, before putting them back in again.
Willie
A man of about sixty and Winnie's husband. Willie is his wife's opposite number in several ways, he is seemingly apathetic and very rarely speaks, only begrudgingly offering responses to his wife, usually headlines from his newspaper, in-between her relentless chatting. In contrast to Winnie's optimism, Willie is seemingly apathetic to his wife's predicament and makes no attempt either to question it or to aid her. His abode is a hole in the ground where Winnie cannot see him, to her disappointment.
