Hall, the president of the Harold Pinter Society, described the object of much of her life's study as generously supportive. Many playwrights - Mamet being the most prominent example - affect a certain snide disdain for those who analyze and interpret their work. And his last stage play, "Celebration" pokes some fun at himself and others' perceptions of him. There is mastery of time, drama and form, perhaps most visible in his brilliant 1981 screenplay for "The French Lieutenant's Woman." There is a lighter side - such as his screenplay to the Anthony Schaffer play "Sleuth." There is his long love affair with his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser. There is more to Pinter, an avowedly non-political playwright who became a political activist late in life. For actors who liked to write their own texts, the sparseness of the Pinter landscape was ideal. Pinter may have been an English playwright, but his blend of naturalism and primal subtext was always a fertile hunting ground for Jeff Perry, Gary Sinise, John Malkovich and their restless cohorts. You can understand why the Steppenwolf Theatre Company was one of the major producers of Pinter in Chicago. And that social reality rooted him to an ordinary floor, however deep his plays would dig. And indeed, Albee is as close to an American Pinter as America has. He included Edward Albee in that analogy. The connection between Pinter and the European absurdists was first popularized by the scholar Martin Esslin. It is that tension that is the undoing of all but the best productions of his work. It is in that tension, that duality, that the heart of his work lies. Anyone doing Pinter has to make us believe both in the reality of his world while exposing the primal emotions and actions under its surface. Whether the production is in London's West End or at the University of Illinois, on Broadway or in a community theater, onstage or on the screen, the principal challenge of realizing a Pinter text is always the same. Before you know it, you've left that shoddy flat and arrived in some kind of primal jungle where the combatants shoot words as weapons and desire nothing but complete, suffocating, sexualized control of their fellow traveler. Underneath, relationships fester, congeal and simplify. But that's merely the veneer of the play.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |