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Reviews
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In Celebration of Harold Pinter: A Kind of Alaska and A Slight AcheGate, Notting Hill Since he is one of their neighbours, it is appropriate that the Gate has launched the first celebration of Harold Pinter's award as Nobel Literature Laureate. This is not the biggest of celebrations, consisting of a well-matched pair of plays lasting a couple of hours between them. Its strength is in meticulous direction from youthful directors Thea Sharrock and Claire Lovett, supported by strong acting, especially in the first piece.
A Kind of AlaskaThis revival of Pinter's short 1984 play is perfectly judged by the three strong cast and pair of directors. From the opening silence, it is utterly gripping and at times both extremely funny and very moving. Anna Calder-Marshall plays Deborah, a hospital patient. As she awakes, she is confronted by a calm doctor who has to break some startling news. She has frozen over and been asleep for 29 years. Her memories and behaviour come from a distant past when she was a flighty 16-year-old undergoing pubertal change. Now she has to come to terms with a new era and the inevitable shifts, births, marriages and deaths that come with the passage of three decades. Playing the doctor, Niall Buggy is upstaged for the first half of the play, only appearing even in profile when his patient takes her first faltering steps, like a young child. Buggy's facial expressions contain all of the anguish of a man who knows terrible facts that will soon have to be conveyed. Deborah's disbelief only gets worse when she discovers that her little sister Pauline played by Diana Hardcastle, rather than being a gauche twelve is in her early forties. The play almost achieves a frightening false ending before Pinter plumps for a more fitting step towards acceptance of her lot by Deborah. This is a lovely and highly enjoyable 45 minutes in which the directors have brought the very best out of both the text and their experienced cast.
A Slight AcheA Slight Ache started life as a radio play over twenty-five years before its partner was written. It takes an oblique view of an elderly couple, Michael Byrne's irascible Edward and his frustrated wife Flora (Miss Hardcastle once again). On the longest day of the year, they enjoy an uncommunicative breakfast across the inevitable Daily Telegraph, which only takes on a life of its own when a wasp crawls crawls into the marmalade pot. This allows Edward to delight in its sticky end - and deliver a final coup de grace prefiguring a subsequent moment. Attention then turns to a statuesque old man selling mouldy matches at the end of the garden. When he appears, you can almost smell him, so manky are his clothes and holed black balaclava. The homeowners' reactions to their guest are to say the least strange. The husband seems terrified by the ancient tramp while his wife flirts as if with a prospective toyboy. Throughout, the overheating Hugo Thurston remains doggedly impassive in a silent role that need not have existed on radio. Just as one is getting increasingly frustrated by the actions of both husband and wife, while wondering if there is to be any purpose to the play, Pinter surprises with the kind of shocking twist in the tail that illuminates all that has gone before. It is good to see our latest Nobel prize-winner celebrated and one hopes that a fuller retrospective is not too far off. You can listen to an extract from A Kind of Alaska and to all of Philip's interview with Anna Calder-Marshall, Niall Buggy and Claire Lovett on Theatre Voice.
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