Jake Lancaster and Muj Hameed rocked us in gently with a Pinteresque Pause that functioned as the overture to a symphonic performance. The successful harmony of the play was evident from the outset, with the married couple bouncing off one another beautifully. The lilting intonation of Petey’s (Luke Gormley) utterances mixed with the tempo of Meg’s (Glesni Anne Euros) slow, hunched, pottering self created a stunning geriatric atmosphere. The play’s cyclical structure makes this scene part of a spot-the-difference pair. The mutation from innocent grandpa to silent witness is reflected in Gormley’s feet positioning under the table – a pigeon toe at the opening and an assertive poker straight at the close.
Stanley’s (Rory Fazan) penetrative entrance immediately signals the next orchestral movement; the tenant’s table-slumping and caustic sobriquets – ‘succulent old washing bag’, ‘piece of old rock cake’ – contrasted with the previous gentleness of the birth of one Lady Mary Splatt.
Upon their arrival, the two strangers upped the pace again – this handsome double act galvanised the whole play. Goldberg (Will Hatcher) is the orator, the mouth; McCann (Barney White) is the agent of action, the arm that feeds him. Hatcher’s Ciceronian performance was flawless. He was chief of the bureau, and business went well – charmed the tulip, bagged the babe and kept his hands (and his suit) clean thanks to his sidekick. The vassal worked not only for his master but for the play itself, White was the megaphone that commanded the audience’s mood, and we obliged. So close was his relationship with us, that an effortless exit through the door-beads had the whole auditorium on the floor.
[mm-hide-text]%%IMG%%4382%%[/mm-hide-text]
Physical contact played an important role in the dance-like nature of the action. There are few instances of touch between the characters – the married couple never touch, the lodger and his landlady’s tickles are made to seem normal and when Stanley touches McCann, the Irishman erupts in an explosion of discomfort. Indeed touch is either disgusting or transgressive -either the centre of an insalubrious snog-sesh between older man and younger girl, or else we see it binding the puppeteer to its puppet.
The interrogation scene was excellently tight, suggesting invisible strings between White and Hatcher. A combination of skilful physicality and orality was key. Stage crossing and door blocking was fused with rhyming couplets; “you left her in the lurch/she was waiting at the church” to accelerate the pace and yoke the counterparts together. The scene gathered its momentum from the spinning-wheel formation and cacophonic crescendo with culminated in either Chicken or Egg.
[mm-hide-text]%%IMG%%4381%%[/mm-hide-text]
A play of doubles; the intangibility of identity was rendered brilliantly through character pairs. Stanley and Petey were a contrasting doublet – civilised man whose cornflakes are “lovely” versus hairy, primitive man whose cereal is ‘disgusting’. Even the staging reinforced the duality of identity; a Pinter sense that; “there is no hard distinction between what is real and what is unreal”. Indeed this duality was crafted elegantly into the set, the choice of lighting cast profile and face-on shadows. This Janus-faced backdrop added to the confrontational nature of the play, while acting as a constant reminder that even the play itself eludes a definitive identity.
5 STARS
