Brenda James, Michelle McGregor, Christopher Louis Parker, Isaac W. Jay (Photo by Jacques Lorch)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Odyssey Theatre
Through April 26
RECOMMENDED
Ron Bottitta and Susan Priver (Photo by Jacques Lorch)
Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter, a visiting production at the Odyssey Theatre, makes a compelling case for the enduring bite of Harold Pinter at his most elusive. In director Jack Heller’s sharply acted production, menace simmers beneath civility, and polite conversation becomes a weapon.
It took a while for critics to recognize the genius of Pinter, who was first making his mark in the theater in the late 1950s — the same time England’s “Angry Young Men,” were coming into prominence.
At a time when the on-the-nose social commentary of John Osburn and his ilk prevailed, Pinter defied categorization. A theatrical magus and Nobel-winner noted for his signature mystery and wit, Pinter remains contemporary and relevant, as evidenced by the two rarely seen one-acts that comprise this show.
Party Time (1991), the evening’s opener, was inspired by a 1985 trip to Turkey, where Pinter and fellow playwright Arthur Miller investigated reports that Turkey’s writers were being tortured and imprisoned under the country’s brutal military regime. At a reception hosted by the American Ambassador, Pinter tasked the ambassador about the reports. The ambassador sloughed off his concerns, condescendingly telling Pinter that he didn’t understand the political reality of the situation — at which point the enraged Pinter responded, “The reality I’m referring to is that of electric current on your genitals.”
Perhaps Pinter’s most blatantly political work, Party Time resonates with the rage of a playwright who has looked, firsthand, into the abyss. Set at a soirée, a group of entitled one-percenters enthuse at length about the exclusive tennis and swimming club where they while away their days. Sounds of chaos just outside fail to puncture the arrogance of these oblivious dilettantes, who chalk up the unrest to just another “round-up” of have-nots.
As the partygoers urge their wealthy host, Gavin (Larry Eisenberg), to join the club, they chitchat in unsettling ways. Former lovers Fred (Isaac W. Jay) and Charlotte (Brenda James) carry a weight of unspoken history that remains unclear. Smugly conservative Douglas (Christopher Louis Parker, sporting a Trump-like long red tie and an American flag lapel) and his equally smug wife, Liz (Michelle McGregor), brandish their “up-by-their bootstraps” privilege, heedless of the human cost of their cruelly reductive worldview
Meanwhile, supremely entitled Melissa (Mouchette Van Helsdingen) natters on about how all her friends are dead, but little matter because she couldn’t stand them — a disclosure met with weirdly enthusiastic applause from her emotionally blunted listeners. Only Dusty (Michelle Ghatan) punctures the prevailing self-satisfaction with her plaintive inquiries about what happened to her brother, Jimmy. Her questions spark the fury of her archetypally sexist husband, Terry (Paul Marius), who casually threatens to murder her.
Glass shatters, the lights go out, and the bloodied and traumatized Jimmy (John Coady) arrives on the scene, closing out the play with a disturbing monologue that leaves no doubt about the brutal suppression of the populace — a dire denouement that is particularly timely today, when “roundups” of the powerless are a daily occurrence.
Also manifest in both plays — as indeed in all of Pinter’s work — are his subtle but omnipresent feminist views, personified in Party Time by the character of Liz, who uses her wiles to defuse her husband’s murderous ire.
That feminism — the pure power of femaleness — resounds in The Lover, an early ‘60s one-act originally written for television but later dramatized for the stage. Initially written for three people, it has been more frequently produced as a two-hander, as it is here.
The play opens as Richard (Ron Bottitta), returning from work, casually asks his wife, Sarah (Susan Priver), “Did your lover come today?” at which point the games commence.
It’s hard to imagine a more chipper and cosmopolitan couple than these two — until the power dynamics shift and Richard exerts his masculine supremacy, a blustering machismo ultimately trumped by Sarah’s more delicately wielded sexuality.
Both plays have been staged by veteran director Heller, with Joel Daavid’s well-appointed set serving for both shows. Gavin Wyrick’s canny lighting is an essential element, although Chris Moscatiello’s mostly effective sound design includes some weirdly obtrusive elevator music in the first play that sounds like it is bleeding in from an adjacent theater.
Heller makes bold choices throughout, transforming Pinter’s elliptical characters into strong and pointed individuals — well-realized by his excellent cast, who leave no pause or potentiality unexplored.
Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter is a prime opportunity to experience this famously obscure playwright in two of his most unjustly obscure works.
Odyssey Theater, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West LA. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm; thru April 26. OdysseyTheatre.com Running time: one hour and 40 minutes with an intermission.
