Theater: Down and Out in London

THE London theater has been passing through a persistent scarcity of good new plays. A prominent symptom was Harold Pinter’s latest gnomic, and incredibly tedious, Ashes to Ashes. It quickly expired in the West End, leaving the English stage hungrier than it has been for some time. As always, this pinched condition has provoked a scattering of hopeful revivals, including a good one of Pinter’s The Homecoming. The startling contrast with Ashes to Ashes showed how far Pinter has fallen away from the genuine promise of his early work.

From the time when I first saw two of his one-act plays in a North London hall in the Fifties, it was clear that Pinter’s flair as a theatrical craftsman was impressive. The novelty in his box of theatrical tricks-fresh and innovative then, but much satirized now-was his discovery that the most banal conversation can be heightened and given apparent “meaning” by introducing arbitrary pauses among lines of dialogue. This manipulative stunt opened a kind of vacuum which critics rushed to fill with their own speculations about unspoken profundity and “menace.” Pinter found himself labeled as a sort of theatrical guru, whose work hinted at revelations about the depths of human experience, life and death, etc.

HG

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Herb Greer

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THE London theater has been passing through a persistent scarcity of good new plays. A prominent symptom was Harold Pinter’s latest gnomic, and incredibly tedious, Ashes to Ashes. It quickly expired in the West End, leaving the English stage hungrier than it has been for some time. As always, this pinched condition has provoked a scattering of hopeful revivals, including a good one of Pinter’s The Homecoming. The startling contrast with Ashes to Ashes showed how far Pinter has fallen away from the genuine promise of his early work.

From the time when I first saw two of his one-act plays in a North London hall in the Fifties, it was clear that Pinter’s flair as a theatrical craftsman was impressive. The novelty in his box of theatrical tricks-fresh and innovative then, but much satirized now-was his discovery that the most banal conversation can be heightened and given apparent “meaning” by introducing arbitrary pauses among lines of dialogue. This manipulative stunt opened a kind of vacuum which critics rushed to fill with their own speculations about unspoken profundity and “menace.” Pinter found himself labeled as a sort of theatrical guru, whose work hinted at revelations about the depths of human experience, life and death, etc.