Simon Thomas in southwest England
10 August 2024
To Director Richard Jones and playwright Harold Pinter are a perfect combination. Jonesexciting and imaginative work in theatre and opera – not least his recent excellent production of Sophie Treadwell’s play Machinewhich began in Bath before trReferring to London’s Old Vic – enlightens and shocks usually. BAre you there He fails Shed new Light To Pinter’s groundbreaking comedy the threatThe results are largely predictable and while it’s never boring, it offers few insights or theatrical tension.
Caolan Byrne and John Marquez.
Photo credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou.
There is so much to explore in this early work, which touches on all the familiar Pinter themes of oppression, miscommunication, and elusive meaning. Two intruders, intimidatinggs from an unspecified organizationation plunges an already fragile household into turmoil and terror. The banalities of everyday life, the consumption of cornflakes, fried bread, and boiled tea, aand the everyday tasks on deckChair management and quick shopping are disrupted by the brutal intrusion of this couple. Not that everything is peaceful in the run-down guesthouse, because the mentally broken lodger Stanley Webber operates his own kind of tyranny over his unsuspecting landlady and her submissive husband. The two newcomers resemble the clumsy assassins from Pinter’s next playThe Dumb Servantplay with existing fears and worries to achieve their unspoken goals.
Jones, uncharacteristically, skims through all of this, with little sense of the simmering fear and psychological damage that is palpable in every line of the film. There are too much trust in empty shouting and little sense of a volcano erupting through the banal surface.
Best billing and awards for the actors go to Jane Horrockswhose shattered coast landlady Meg Bowles has a weak voice and a weak frame and appears somewhat tormented, suggesting that her past was full of sorrow and hurt. Their indifference to the evil that Ihappening around her, while she carefreely sat on some pretty awful “Playground Games” is touching and disturbing because it refuses to face the reality of the situation. Her sheer fear of the men in the van with the wheelbarrow – which reminds her of God knows what horrors from the past – is triggered in a few frightening and alarming moments by the despotic outbursts of her surrogate child, Stanley, before she falls back into self-preserving naivety. When the two thugs Goldberg and McCann, carry out their mysterious mission on the shattered Stanley, she falls into complete blindness and denial and believes She is the ball queen in an imaginary palace full of comfort and security.
Carla Harrison-Hodge and John Marquez.
Photo credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou.
Jones and Horrocks have worked together in a memorable way before, on a thrilling Young Vic production of Brecht’sThe Good Person of Szechwanand their collaboration here is the greatest strength of the evening.
The rest of the cast is less impressive. Perhaps The most damaged character in the play is Lulu, the young woman who comes and goes from the boarding house and easily presents herself as a helpless toy. There is strong evidence of child abuse in her attraction to the much older Goldberg, who lets her bounce inappropriately on his knee and Schnapps. Carla Harrison-Hodge, who recently appeared in theMachineshe plays with a rigid grin and little sense of the smoldering pain beneath her eager facade and shows not much more than just anger at being used for a one-night stand.
Sam Swainsbury curses and sweats like Stanley, but is never really convincing, although a silent scream in the corner of the room suggests more exciting possibilities. As a violent duo, John Marquez (Goldberg) and Caolan Byrne (McCann) are too obvious in their Violence and one would have expected Jones to have elicited more subtle and unusual portrayals from them. Meg’s unhappy husband Petewhich is on the Sidelines with powerless empathy, is portrayed sluggishlymainly by Nicolas Tennant.
ULTZ‘s set is rather clinical and clean, hardly Determination the shabbiness of the dilapidated guesthouse whose Peeling walls and scratched furniture reflect the psyche of the characters, although the use of a screen in front of the stage represent Window to the outside world in Beginning and ending of scenes has more exciting visual potential.
