Pinter, Marvellous Pinter

This was a Pinter double bill, of two of his more obscure early plays. I've made a resolution now that, having seen almost all the Pinter canon (bar the Caretaker), I'm going to see some other serious drama. I've finally seen Beckett, there's some Ibsen on at the Barbican right now, and I'm sure I can locate some Chekhov. For the moment, though, Pinter is good fun.

The Lover and The Collection

This Pinter double bill is about sex, captured, trapped and examined. It is the constant undercurrent, the backdrop and the motivating force for accusation and counter-accusation, for lies, and for games turned serious.

In the first of the two plays, ‘The Lover’, a happily married couple (Richard Coyle and Gina McKee) dispel the monotony of suburbia by role playing as adulterers. The game continues on and on, becoming more powerful, until their double characters invade every part of their lives, and pretence and reality become intertwined beyond separation.

The second play, ‘The Collection’, once again deals with truth and sex. An angry husband (Coyle) alleges that playboy Bill (Charlie Cox) has slept with his wife, and as the two men build up a curious rapport, Bill amuses himself by altering his story, delighting in the anguish he causes James. Meanwhile, Harry (Timothy West), Bill’s patron, rushes around trying to resolve the trouble which Bill is determined to cause.

Both plays are extremely well acted; in particular, Gina McKee is gloriously erotic as the wife in ‘The Lover’, and Charlie Cox is charmingly supercilious as Bill in ‘The Collection’. Timothy West is, of course, as good as you would expect as the frustrated, disappointed landlord, half lover, half father to Bill. Both plays are equally well staged, with an overpowering black wall betraying the apparent coziness of the living room, and a set which manages to evoke both moldering Kensington decadence (‘The Collection’) and dull Home Counties suburbia (‘The Lover’) without alteration.

Yet there is something missing. It is not the ending – neither play ends conclusively, but this is Pinter, and you would not expect it to. It is not the language, which is as witty as always. These plays feel somewhere in the middle; they are neither as glaringly intimate as ‘The Dumb Waiter’, nor as aggressive as ‘The Homecoming’. This double bill has all the hallmarks of Pinter, and is most certainly worth seeing – but it is not his satisfyingly brutal best.