speaking of love and politics
by
Douglas Messerli
Harold
Pinter (playwright) “Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter, Two One Act Plays: Party
Time and The Lover / 2026
It’s
always a joy to be able to attend longer or short plays by British author
Harold Pinter, one the most notable writers of drama of the 20th century,
winner of the prestigious America Award in 1995 and the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 2005. The other day I had the opportunity to see two short plays
seldom produced in the US, directed by Jack Heller at the Odyssey Theatre in
Los Angeles.
The first thing that struck one, in this
case, was a magnificent set by Joel Daavid, which helped to made the small open
stage of the Odyssey seem like a vast proscenium production. The first of the
two plays, “Party Time,” began in media res with the actors already
engaged in quiet conversation at the formal London suburban celebration, the
various singles and mostly couples moving around the room as they engage in
drinks and talk.
The entering audience members, at least on
my evening, seemed engaged in their own party-like conversations (the group
behind me were constituted of what appeared to be a female theater-going clutch)
until the signal of lights and announcement to turn off the phones, hinting at
almost a kind of warring party-going, the situation perhaps creating an even
more political context as the two sets of party-goers appeared each to demand
equal attention.
The 1991 play is actually one of Pinter’s
most political works and one of his last plays in a career that became
increasingly political as time went on. This particular short play was sparked
by a visit Pinter and playwright Arthur Miller made to Turkey in 1985
sponsored, in part, by the Helsinki Watch to check out rumors about that
country’s writers being tortured under its military regime. Attending a
reception at the American Embassy, Pinter asked Ambassador Robert Strausz-Hupé,
an arch-conservative Ronald Reagan political appointee, for his assessment of
the situation. Strausz-Hupé pooh-poohed his concerns, explaining to the
playwright that he couldn’t possibly comprehend the complexity of the real
situation. “There can be lot of opinions about anything,” remarked
Strausz-Hupé. “Not if you’ve got an electric wire hooked to your testicles,”
Pinter provocatively responded.
Michelle Ghatan,
Paul Marius, Larry Eisenberg, and Mouchette Van Helsdingen. Photo by Jacques
Lorch.
In the party of the play, hosted by the
wealthy elderly man Gavin (Larry Eisenberg), several of the invitees evidently
belong to a wealthy health club, reacting in various ways to its exclusiveness
and amenities. Terry (Paul Marius), obviously a man who has begun his life as a
poor Cockney and worked his way up, is impressed by the warm towels, which
reminds his host of the barber’s towels of old days, something Terry cannot
even imagine or comprehend. Terry’s wife Dusty (Michelle Ghatan) seems to be
the only one truly troubled by what appears to be a kind of revolution going on
outside the mansion in which they are partying, asking time and again, against
her husband’s attempts to shut her up, what has become of her brother Jimmy.
But she refuses to be quieted, resulting in
what appears to be promised violence even her murder from Terry upon their
eventual return home. Meanwhile the elegant older Melissa (Mouchette Van
Helsdingen) is outraged that her automobile was actually been pulled over and
inspected on her way to the party. She totally stops the social chatter briefly
to argue that nearly all the clubs she previously belonged to consisted of
people who are now dead and had no moral principle as a base for their
organizations. Finally in the Club, to which she also belongs, the organization,
she argues, is built upon moral values, to which Terry crudely responds, that
the Health Club allows no bad behavior, and “if they do [behave badly] we kick
them in the balls and chuck them down the stairs with no trouble at all.” All
of the guests attempt to get Gavin to apply for membership.
Douglas (Christopher Louis Parker), as
close to a Maga conservative as Pinter’s characters get, suggests that “they”—evidently
those attempting to put down whatever revolution his kind are responding to—want
only order, and as soon as it returns, everything will go back to normal.
Obviously, he is speaking of “his” vision of order and the values of these
empty-headed men and women. His wife Liz (Michelle McGregor) equally supports
the causes of the despicable man she has married obviously for the power he pretends
and the wealth he has acquired over the years. And finally, Fred (Isaac W. Jay)
and Charlotte (Brenda James) smirk at one another, possibly in hopes of
restoring the flame they once shared in a secret love affair.
Brenda James, Michelle McGregor, Christopher Louis Parker, and Isaac W. Jay. Photo by Jacques Lorch.
Almost all of them, while drinking heavily,
declare the dreadful affair they are attending as being one of the most
memorable evenings they have shared for a long while.
But meanwhile noises, small explosions,
shouts, and the sounds of sizable crowds continue at regular intervals from the
world outside until the room suddenly goes black as Dusty’s lost brother Jimmy
(John Coady) breaks his way through a window, bloodied from the street battles
and wearing a T-shirt declaring his rebellious intentions. In his short
monologue he gives voice to the suppression of the general population,
revealing the lies and pretense of all the party-goers, an act that can only
remind us of the seeming powerlessness of the general population today against
the current illegal activities of the government. The rich may be momentary frightened,
but they will maintain their power at all cost, if for no other reason of the
existence of the Club’s hot towels and vague moral values that underlie all
their pleasures.
The second play, “The Lover” from 1962,
is akin to the several sexual farces Pinter wrote during that period, including
“The Collection” of the same year, the 1964 masterpiece The Homecoming,
and his later 1978 work, Betrayal.
Ron
Bottitta and Susan Priver. Photo by Jacques Lorch. In all those works the central couples
do indeed cheat and betray one another, mostly with vast if sometimes bizarre
consequences. In this piece centered upon a suburban London husband and wife,
Richard and Sarah (Ron Bottitta and Susan Priver), after 20 years of marriage
seem to have found, however, full satisfaction in their lives by keeping a
lover, in Sarah’s case, and by Richard’s having mindless sex occasionally with
a whore. Richard comes home late from his busy days at the office to find a
quite satisfied wife, while he, although forced to daily study his various
charts and diagrams, seems to be perfectly comfortable with Sarah’s
extracurricular activities.
That is, until one day the bongo-playing
lothario who twice or three times a week visits Sarah determines he is finally
dissatisfied with their relationship, finding her simply too bony, and wants
out; on the very same day, her husband returns tired of her extramarital
affairs and forbidding her to see her lover any longer in the domain for which
he pays.
The slightly over the hill Sarah is
suddenly faced with a disaster of sorts, her leisured life being threatened by
the sudden demand that she play the role of a “real” wife, serving up dinner
and attending to her somewhat boring husband who incidentally finds her lovely
and plump.
But by this time the playwright has made
it quite apparent that this couple loves to play games almost as much as Martha
and George do in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and
that, in reality, Richard is also Sarah’s visiting lover, she his whore. Now he,
having locked her up in his castle, creates a very exciting prospect of an
evening for his surprised wife, who must recognize herself as the whore to her
husband’s romantic passions.
I should add that the lighting design by
Gavan Wyrick and along with the lovely costumes by Shon Leblanc and the sound
design by Chris Moscatiello provide these works with a great deal of their
power.
If there are any complaints about this
wonderful gathering of two lesser known Pinter works it is simply the result of
there being a reason why these plays are seldom performed. Neither of them is
up to the mysterious, menacing forces and the linguistic genius of Pinter’s
greatest works. In the playwright’s most successful works both on stage and in
film, one can never be sure where the sexual desire may take his characters,
often veering off as they do into heterosexual confusion and homosexual love or
entering situations where language takes the narrative, as it awkwardly lurches
forward, into new territory where it sometimes seems unsafe even to speak.
In this case, the sexual games are all a
bit too predictable and not that terribly exciting in their surprises; and
these would-be dictators can hardly say anything of originality and real
cleverness to the society at large. But then, even the weakest of Pinter is
better than so much of theater that you simply have to wonder at his gifts. I’d
suggest anyone who truly loves theater should rush off to the Odyssey to see
these pieces before they end their run on April 26.
Los
Angeles, March 24, 2026
Reprinted
from Theater, Opera, and Performance (March 2026).
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment