The Lover

[aysha viswamohan]

Dear All

 

I'm copying two reviews of the production of The Lover; also  find a link to the same play. This forum as always is open for exchanging your views. In the meanwhile, please collect ur copies of Six Degrees of Separation; we'll have Harsh, Sebastian and Janini performing the 1st part (pp 1-40) of the play on 26th.

 

 

 

Best

 

Aysha

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/pinter/pinter-classics.shtml

 

Review I

 

 

Pinter's 'The Lover'
By Liz Ellison, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Monday, November 20, 2006

ARTICLE TOOLS

Student productions are one of Dartmouth theater's best-kept secrets. Unfortunately, these excellent plays are all too often overshadowed by the (also excellent) mainstage productions, with which they tend to run concurrently. Students who did not catch the gem of a play that rocked the low-key Warner Bentley Theater this weekend missed quite a show.

Harold Pinter's "The Lover," directed by Lily King '07, debuted on Thursday night and ended its run at the Bentley yesterday afternoon. The play centers on a couple Sarah (Erin Han '09) and Richard (Jesse Migneault GRLS '08) whose marriage has lasted 10 years despite their bizarre, mutually adulterous relationship.

Since this is a Pinter play, nothing is quite what it seems on the surface: Just when we think we understand what is going on between the two characters, another twist throws us off, highlighting Pinter's skilled use of ambiguous, if not outright misleading, dialogue and loaded silences.

We realize right away that Sarah and Richard's marriage is somewhat unconventional: the first scene finds Richard politely asking his wife if she will be seeing her lover that day, then kissing her goodbye as he leaves for work. Later we learn that infidelity runs both ways -- Richard, for his part, is "very well acquainted with a whore."

However, we soon find out that the status quo is not working for Richard anymore. His jealousy surfaces despite Sarah's surprised reassurances that he really is her true love. But as the play progresses, Pinter keeps the audience guessing as to just who is the lover and who is the husband. Sarah and Richard have created quite a complicated little world for themselves, and we are led to question whether this lover who has been causing so many problems actually exists.

As Richard and Sarah, Migneault and Han played off each other wonderfully. A fantastic, sexually-charged scene involving bongo drums showed off the actors' chemistry best, but any number of moments in "The Lover" proved that these two had what it takes to pull off an intense two-character play like this one. Though the dynamic of their characters' relationship changes constantly throughout the play, it always remained convincing.

At its core, "The Lover" is a drama, but there was plenty to laugh at in the characters' interactions, and Han in particular worked every "Pinter Pause" for maximum comic effect. Richard's stuffily affectionate manner -- whether he is interrogating his wife or awkwardly professing his love -- became even funnier when met with Sarah's impatience and confusion.

The characters' attempts to talk casually about their respective affairs were amusingly futile, but the games they played -- ridiculous as they seemed -- ultimately offered real insight into the things people do to keep their relationships alive.

The hilarious Josh Feder '08 managed to steal a short but memorable scene that set Sarah and his character, John the milkman and possible lover, at cross-purposes. Feder's priceless facial expressions and vocal inflection turned his brief appearance into arguably the funniest moment of the play.

Students involved in "The Lover" unanimously agreed on the benefits of working with such a small cast, particularly in terms of character development.

"We can get quickly down to the interesting stuff about what the characters want and what they want from each other," said King, who added that she selected the play "because it would allow for an actor-centered process."

Choosing to direct "The Lover" was a gutsy move on King's part, and it paid off handsomely. Although Pinter's plays have been known to confuse first-time readers and audiences, the actors had nothing but praise for the playwright's tight command of tricky dialogue.

"It is always a challenge and a real pleasure to work with Pinter's text," said Migneault, who added that since much of his background has been in comedies, working on a dramatic play "has been amazing."

Han also voiced admiration for the way Pinter "inverts absurdity and reality" in his work. "Once you really get into the world of it, it's totally logical and it makes perfect sense," she said.

The play's final scene brings Richard and Sarah together while finally confirming the truth about their supposed infidelities. Both funny and moving, the ending nicely captures the overall spirit of "The Lover." King's excellent directing, along with standout performances from both leads, made this production a clear winner.

 

 

 

Review 2

 

Coupling
Harold Pinter Finds The Funny In Using Sex As A Weapon

AND STAY THERE: Bolton Marsh (left) keeps Timothy Andres Pabon down in The Collection.

By Geoffrey Himes

When Harold Pinter won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy's Per Wastberg presented the prize by saying, "The need to rule and mislead, the suffocating sensation of accidents bubbling under the quotidian, the nervous perception that a dangerous story has been censored--all this vibrates through Pinter's drama."

That sense of menacing darkness is the usual view of Pinter's writing, and it's accurate as far as it goes. But what's often overlooked is how funny his plays can be. That's the quality that director Xerxes Mehta pulls out of two of Pinter's early one-acts, The Collection and The Lover, now combined in one impressive show at Rep Stage.

In The Lover, for example, a middle-class suburban wife spices up her afternoon tryst with a lover by playing games. First she pretends to be a mugging victim in a park, then a seducer of the park keeper, and finally a kidnapping victim in a locked room. There's something aggressive about the way she and her partner force each other into these powerful/powerless roles, but there's something ridiculous about it as well.

Marni Penning, who plays Sarah, vaguely resembles Tracey Ullman and has a similar gift for transforming herself from a mousy housewife into a terrorizing vamp--for either dramatic or comic purposes. When Sarah shifts from squealing, hand-fluttering victim to slit-eyed, serpent-hissing seductress, the sudden change not only makes us wary of her intentions but also makes us laugh at her pretenses.

It's not clear at first if Sarah is really having an affair or just pretending. And in The Collection, it's not clear if Stella slept with Bill at a business conference or just made the whole story up. Thus these two short plays, which were first presented on British television and then on London stages in the early 1960s, are well matched and form a complete, coherent evening of theater.

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