PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

The Ustinov, Bath (to Sat 19 Feb)

THEATRE Even by Pinter’s standards, ‘Landscape’ and ‘Monologue’ are bleak, minimalist pieces. In ‘Monologue’, the initially chipper Man recalls incidents from a friendship which may or may not have broken down due to sexual jealousy; in ‘Landscape’, Duff and Beth grasp at memories of incidents which appear to have shaped their childless, possibly sexless and now definitely at-odds, post-traumatic relationship. Naturally, not much ‘happens’: the near-ritualistic set change between the two is the most action-packed it gets. At the same time, though, both short plays contain some of Pinter’s most condensed, poetic and emotionally brutal writing and, in this pin-sharp production directed by Chris Goode, they reveal themselves to be small masterpieces of fertile ambiguity and quiet devastation. With the tiniest gestures and the subtlest inflections, the three actors – Clive Mendus as Man, Maggie Henderson as Beth and George Irving as Duff – register the huge, roiling, individual tragedies which lurk behind the narrative fragments they each recount, brilliantly deploying Pinter’s notorious pauses to illuminate what shadows their seemingly random recollections of feeding ducks, lying on a beach, standing on a railway platform. It’s theatre made out of almost nothing – and it’s all the more beautiful and terrifying as a result. (Tom Phillips)

Copyright Tom Phillips 2011

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