Most entertaining of love affairs

The Lover and The Collection, a double bill of The Lover and The Collection, by Harold Pinter
The Comedy Theatre 30th April

The Lover, a Pinter one act two hander, sparkles with emerald style (diamonds being just a bit too obvious.).
An intimate look at a marriage where a set of careful compromises are in play, the tone is glib and the actors (Gina McKee and Richard Coyle) are clearly ’acting’ but the emotions are surprisingly raw. No one would expect the writing to do anything less than whip, dice, turn and sing, but in The Lover, Pinter leads the audience up a very twisting garden path with a lot of nice flourishes and witty moments along the way.

The couple, ten years into their marriage, are exploring their differing desires for duality on that rickety old bridge between love and lust and instead of finding a spot in the middle they’re moving straight from one end to the other by conducting very civilised affairs – with each other. The brilliant frission between the terribly British Mr. and Mrs. amicably discussing the affair as if it’s being conducted outside the marriage, and the role playing, bongo drumming, intimate personal fantasies they act out had me on-side from the start. I got the impression that the audience felt in safe hands with the actors and narrative and were eagerly following the couple as they began to explore a bit more than just the difference between being a man and a woman or a whore, lover, mistress or wife.

The two-roomed staging was suitably stylish and clever and the era was 40’s – 50’s chic (and that goes for the dialogue as well as the look.).  The sex was less suggested, more real, and more sexy and honest than overt (with coitus performed under the tea table.) as were the emotions – I thought they all trod the line awfully well, darling.

The Collection, with two extra characters (played by Charlie Cox and Timothy West), was a similar dip into the intimate world of personal relationships, partnerships and desire, with the extra characters adding the possibility of homosexuality into the mix. The story centres around the confession and re-confession of a one night stand; did the young married woman really do ‘that’ with the louche but glamorous toyboy? As the partners of the standees become involved events are revised and the winners’ and losers’ roles are cleverly re-assigned. Insecurity reigns as does the clever arrangement of the actors’ bodies on stage which is suggestive but without being an utter farce, and more witty dialogue, including what has to be one of the best monologues I’ve ever seen: a tremendous moment from Timothy West as he explains that his young ‘friend’ is a “slum slug”.  More emotive words have never been spoken in love and I will keep that one for future use.

In both plays it is the female characters who come off best, playing cat and mouse games with the truth and kneading and seasoning the situation to their own tastes. Both girls (both played by Gina McKee) are durable and comfortably capable of duality and expertly play their strengths and weaknesses. Both plays explored the themes of love, partnership, sexual desire and insecurity but I still appreciated the underlying sisterhood of those graceful slips of things playing to get what they need and winning . Without this edge, The Collection would be a bit like the decadent versus the ‘proper’, but the bourgeois tone Pinter allows his characters shows up their flaws warmly.

In spite of the comic and unerring tip of the banter flashing across the surface of this evening’s theatre, I found the underlying emotions honest. I like the idea of these characters being real people.  In fact, I hope very much that there are people creative enough to add this kind of drama to their personal relationships as they tread back and forwards on the love-to-lust bridge via insecurity. I just hope they’re not living next door to me (unless they’re a slum slug, of course, and then I may get the opportunity to utter those words.).

P.S. It should have been called ‘The Pinter Collection’…