By Harold Pinter
Directed by Lindsay Posner
Set and Costume designer Peter McIntosh
Composer – Ed Lewis
Bath Ustinov Studio
Thursday 11 April 2024
14.30
CAST
David Morrissey – Richard (The Lover) / Harry (The Collection)
Matthew Horne- John (The Lover) / James (The Collection)
Claudia Blakley – Sarah (The Lover) / Stella (The Collection)
Elliot Barnes-Worrall – Bill (The Collection)
It’s a year of Pinter. The Birthday Party at The Ustinov and The Caretaker at Chichester follow this. The Ustinov continues to amaze. How do they attract such major actors to such a tiny theatre? We couldn’t get anywhere near tickets for Dominic West. Sold out right away. OK, the seats are cramped and uncomfortable but the quality of the performances and the intimacy outweigh that. Lindsay Posner has directed so many very special plays here.
The set and costume design is everything you’d want. There is a deliberate division between the plays.
The Lover is late 50s / pre-1962. Her frock is perfect. The set design with the beige classic furniture matches.
The Collection is post 1963. Very narrow ties (I kept some just in case they ever come back). They’re in the fashion industry. Black leather sofas. She has an Op-Art handbag which would be 1965.
We felt it was a good separation, subtle and carried through very well. Actually The Collection was an ITV play in May 1961, while The Lover started out as a TV play in March 1963, so they have reversed the date order. The Collection was staged at The Aldwych in March 1962, while the Lover was first staged in September 1963. So they were not initially presented as a pair, which they generally have been since.
However, the combination comes with their publication in one volume by Methuen plays in 1963. The paperback illustrated is 1966.
In The Collection the two flats would normally be side by side. They’re not. Stella and Jimmy’s flat is rear stage. Bill and Harry’s flat is front stage. Lighting separates them. Excellent and efficient set design.
The Lover
We both loved the acting from David Morrissey and Claudia Blakley. The play is about a suburban couple (the script says ‘a detached house in Windsor’) who keep their ten year marriage alive by role play and fantasy. In the afternoons, Richard returns home acting as ‘a bit of rough.’ Sarah is the housewife, or whore in the afternoon. In the play text he is Richard in the morning and evening scenes, but noted as ‘Max’ in the afternoon scenes.
At breakfast and in the evening they continue the role-play getting most upset about it with lines breaking across. It’s the swinging 60s of Sinatra, not the post-1962 Sixties sexual freedom of The Beatles. It’s rather seedy. A touch of Mayfair or Playboy, or worse, Readers Wives. Adultery was Pinter’s big thing from Joan Bakewell to Lady Antonia Fraser. The part of Sarah was played by his wife, Vivien Merchant in 1963. Vivien Merchant also played Stella in The Collection. Was that pointed?
A blackout, plus the music, xylophone, bongos and bass separates the many very short sections. The music is perfect for the era, messy lounge jazz, which can be heard in the “cool” films of the era. It’s excellent. There was the Ustinov hallmark in these plays with many short scenes. Principle actors do the props clearing on stage.
Matthew Horne has a three or four line cameo as a milkman. It’s a little in-joke because there used to be so many seaside postcards about milkmen and randy housewives. You think he’s going to be invited in, but he’s not because she is waiting for Richard dressed up as Max.
As the play develops, Richard seems to be getting doubtful about the whole role-play concept, which upsets Sarah … but is this simply another part of the role play?
Review in two words? Karen’s was “Repulsive. Repetitive.” That’s a comment on the play text, yet she thought both actors were superb. I protest that Pinter was the master of short pithy dialogue. Karen says, ‘Yes, that’s male communication, which is why Pinter just can’t write women.’ This is a long held view. It’s been much discussed. I like Pinter. Karen doesn’t. As I have mentioned in previous reviews, full play sets were stored in my office for the costumed and acted play readings for ELT students. That’s where we wrote our first two textbooks. Our hallmark was short ‘Every day conversations’ (Where to? London. What time? Three. / Tired? A little. Bad traffic? No.) and Bernie and I used to limber up sometimes by grabbing a couple of Pinter off the shelf and acting out the one or two word conversations aloud.
The play is intrinsically past its ‘Best Before’ date. Great director, great set and costume, superb acting, but the Pinter contribution is the problem. I don’t suppose he saw it as more than a short, sharp ITV play with a more adult theme than usual.
What a shame given the cast. For a supposed ‘comedy’ a few titters don’t count.
The Collection
This is a far better play than The Lover. It has drama, menace, comedy, intrigue, mystery. James and Stella area married couple who run a designer dress boutique. James believes Stella spent the night with Bill at a hotel in Leeds during a clothes fashion presentation. Bill is a dress designer too, sharing a house with Harry, an older man. Harry is overtly gay (Clue: he has a red smoking jacket). Bill is too, but it was 1963 so they ‘shared a house’ rather than ‘lived together.’ Harry has exquisite Chinese vases.
James turns up to confront Bill and try to discover what really happened in Leeds. Harry is jealous, especially as James, the wronged husband, seems ‘strangely attracted’ to Bill. Both appear bisexual. Harry goes to Stella to ask her. He’s none the wiser. We never find out what really happened.
At times, Bill is treated like a servant, fetching and carrying. It’s partly that Harry is posh and Bill is ‘from a slum.’ That means that like so many 1960s designers, photographers, models, musicians and artists … and playwrights born in Hackney … simply that he is not from the public school classes.
A magic moment in the play is when Harry (David Morrissey)delivers a long speech to James about Bill. It begins:
Harry: Bill’s a slum boy, you see, he‘s got a slum sense of humour. That’s why I never take him along with me to parties. He’s got a slum mind. I have nothing against slum minds, per se, you understand, nothing at all …
The magic is watching Elliot Barnes-Worrell’s facial reactions as Bill. He’s heard this stuff so many times.
The programme note is by Michael Billington (How I miss his Guardian reviews!) He is also Pinter’s biographer, and once directed the Lover himself.
Rene Giraud coined the phrase “triangular desire” to describe the process by which two men are drawn together by the urge to sleep with the same woman: the peculiar intimacy between James and Bill precisely foreshadows that between James Fox and Dirk Bogarde in the film of ‘The Servant’ which Pinter wrote immediately after he finished’The Collection.”
Michael Billington, programme essay
Matthew Horne is wonderful. He has that combination of mincing and menacing that Pinter writes so well. He glides around, lips pursed. I’d love to see him follow Rik Mayall, Samuel West and Andrew Scott and play the lead in Present Laughter. We noted that we’ve seen nearly all of the Gavin & Stacey sitcom cast on stage … Matthew Horne, James Corden, Ruth Jones, Rob Brydon, Alison Steadman, Sheridan Smith, Adrian Scarborough. That emphasizes how a great sitcom needs great actors. We need to see Joanna Page! (Stacey).
We wondered about the white kitten that Stella (Claudia Blakley) has to cuddle and stroke in the background. In the photo above it’s a full size cat, but when we saw it, she had a small kitten. Cats are not as malleable, so therefore not as trainable as dogs. Maybe that’s why a small kitten was substituted after the photo. Cats can’t be impossible to train … see Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Pinter had long experience in rep, and must have known the old adage ‘Never work with animals or children.’ You need a trainer backstage for starters. It’s odd. A cuddly toy might have done the same job.
It is so well-performed. Being that close to the actors is a treat. I think the critical consensus on three stars is correct, because I’d give The Lover two stars, and The Collection four stars. Overall:
***
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
Five Star
Graham Wyles, Stage Talk *****
Four star
Susannah Clapp, The Observer ****
three star
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ***
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian ***
Rosemary Wauh, The Stage ***
Kris Hallett, What’s On Stage ***
Jim Keaveny, The Arts Dispatch ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
REVIEWS OF PLAYS BY HAROLD PINTER
The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter, West End 2018
No Man’s Land, by Harold Pinter, 2016 with Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart
The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, Old Vic, 2016
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, Trafalgar Studios
The Hot House by Harold Pinter, Trafalgar Studios
Accident (film) 1967
LINDSAY POSNER
Farewell Mr Haffman By Jean-Philippe Gaguerre, Bath Ustinov 2023
God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, Bath TheatreRoyal 2018
The Lie by Florian Zeller, Menier Chocolate Factory, 2017
The Truth by Florian Zeller, Menier Chocolate Factory 2016
Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn, Menier Chocolate Factory 2015
Dinner With Saddam by Anthony Horowitz, Menier Chocolate Factory 2015
The Hypochondriac by Moliere, adapted Richard Bean, Bath Theatre Royal, 2014
A Little Hotel On The Side By Feydau, Bath Theatre Royal 2013
She Stoops To Conquer by Goldsmith, Bath Theatre Royal 2014
Hay Fever by Noel Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2014
Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh, Poole Lighthouse 2013
DAVID MORRISSEY
Hangmen by Martin McDonagh, West End 2015 (Harry)
MATTHEW HORNE
The Miser by Molière, West End 2017
ELLIOT BARNES-WORRELL
Henry IV, Parts I and II, RSC 2014
Man & Superman, National Theatre 2014
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