A KIND OF ALASKA/A SLICHT ACHE. To 6 May.
London
A KIND OF ALASKA/A SLIGHT ACHE
by Harold Pinter
Gate Theatre To 6 May 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm no performance 14, 15 April
BSL Signed 28 April
Runs 1hr 55min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7229 0706
www.gatetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 April
A family split and a family brought together; both with immaculate clarity and economy.
What, precisely, happened to Precisely? This 1983 piece was originally going to form part of the Gate’s In Celebration of Harold Pinter. There remain the other 2 slices, performed in reverse chronological order. 1982’s A Kind of Alaska fits neither stock image of the playwright’s work, being neither comic nor menacing. Nor does it fit the political Pinter of later plays.
It’s a heart-warming work that never slides into sentimentality. The fictional case of Deborah comes from a remarkable medical phenomenon, the discovery of the drug L-dopa, which resurrected consciousness in people affected with long-term ‘sleeping sickness’. Pinter’s precision and verbal discipline scalpels the reality of such an awakening. Deborah fell into a state of neither sleep nor wakefulness 29 years ago. Now the 45-year old woman wakes still thinking herself 16.
Anna Calder-Marshall beautifully captures the manner of Deborah’s well-brought up 16-year old self. There’s a coy sexuality to her suspicions about Niall Buggy’s elderly suited figure, and the pleasant insistence of a girl who’s confident of her place in happy family life.
Amongst this Calder-Marshall also finds moments of silent agony or anxiety from the uncertain moments of her wakening when she cannot easily believe someone at last can hear her – a beautiful opening that implies all the sunken years. Buggy’s doctor moves from apparent impartiality to emotional intensity as he watches her try to stand. Diana Hardcastle is as good in her restrained response to Deborah, who cannot understand why her young sister now looks middle-aged.
Hardcastle takes centre stage as Flora in the 1959 TV play A Slight Ache, an early Pinter drama of unspoken emotions and possession. In the men around her, husband Edward (Michael Bryant, forceful as his energy, shifting between good-humour and anger, exposes underlying fear) with his volumes of words and the silent Matchseller whose proximity appals Edward, resemble the talkative and silent women of Strindberg’s The Stronger . Hardcastle’s Flora, ever-pleasant as the affluent wife could afford to be, subtly suggests the discontent under an apparently sunny existence. This finely-performed double-bill admirably indicates Pinter’s style at work in very different situations.
A Kind of Alaska
Hornby: Niall Buggy
Deborah: Anna Calder-Marshall
Pauline: Diana Hardcastle
A Slight Ache
Edward: Michael Byrne
Flora: Diana Hardcastle
Matchseller: Hugo Thurston
Directors: Claire Lovett/Thea Sharrock
Designer: Paul Wills
Lighting: Gavin Owen for Charcoalblue
Sound: Yamina Mezeli
Assistant director: Nicholas Rogers
2006-04-02 13:48:31