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Underpowered and ponderous, this Pinter double-bill might prove a chore, even for fans.Summary
Rating
Ok
The ‘Pinter Pause’ has a lot to answer for. The famously recalcitrant writer was often quizzed about his penchant for silence and, across his career, often changed his tune over the meaning of his infamous ‘dot dot dots’. I’ll bet my house, however, that even at his most mischievous and prickly, Harold Pinter never suggested they were an instruction to act slowly.
This hasn’t stopped Greenwich Theatre boss, James Haddrell directing two early one-act Pinter plays, A Slight Ache and The Dumb Waiter, at a glacial pace. Not only has he seemingly encouraged his actors to take their time, but he has also, somehow, robbed the texts of their intensity. To be fair, the fault may partly lie in Alice Carroll’s sets which are attractive, but wide and expansive. Characters have space to wander and ponder when, in fact, they should be bumping heads and, frankly, getting on each other’s tits. But really, there’s no excuse.
A Slight Ache, which forms act one, could be an episode of The Good Life in an alternative darkly dysfunctional universe. It has, on the face of it, all the same domesticity, middle-class, marmalade and marriage tropes of everyone’s favourite 1970’s sitcom. Kerrie Taylor’s performance as the patient wife, easily the best thing of the evening, is certainly reminiscent of Felicity Kendall’s Barbara. Like her, Taylor’s character is bemused, but not overly concerned, by her husband Edward (Jude Akuwudike) and his mental breakdown.
Sadly, Akuwudike never quite makes us believe in Edward’s unravelling. Why has this uptight quasi-intellectual got a slight ache behind the eyes? Why does he insist a stranger come to his study to be interrogated? Why does this prompt a descent into despair and regression, foetal position and all? In another production, the answer might be that he hates women or feels impotent or actually is impotent (it often is with Pinter). But really, the world’s your oyster. As it stands, we’re left clueless and, unforgivably, unengaged for over an hour.
On with act two. The Dumb Waiter is why everyone is here after all. It is surely Pinter’s most famous early play and has the advantage of being about contract killers. They’re exciting, aren’t they? Well, you’d think. Here, though, they simply pass the time, argue, worry about gas and get embroiled in an upstairs kitchen through the dumb waiter of the title. It is pleasant enough but I didn’t believe, Tarintino-esque black suits aside, either Ben (Tony Mooney) or Gus (Akuwudike again) could, or indeed, would kill anyone. There was no real short fuse. No hair trigger. These weren’t men on the edge. They were just men. In a room.
Nobel Laureate Pinter, love him or loathe him, owed his entire career to menace and the threat of violence. In the right hands, his words can, and should, explode like rounds of ammunition. If his characters pause, it’s never to inwardly reflect. No, it’s all part of the firefight because, in Pinter’s muscular masculine world, life is a war to be won. Above all else, come out fighting! In presenting the writer’s work without this immediate sense of danger, Haddrell’s production feels to miss the target by some distance.
Written by: Harold Pinter
Directed by: James Haddrell
Produced by: Simon Francis
Set and costume design by: Alice Carroll
Lighting design by: Matt Keywood
Sound design by: Paul Gavin
The Dumb Waiter & A Slight Ache double bill plays at Greenwich Theatre until 3 June. Further information and bookings can be found here.
