Word: pinter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...play is laced with laconic, seemingly perfunctory responses such as "Oh, yes," "Ah, well," "Really?" but Director Lindsay Anderson has orchestrated these in a stylized contrapuntal flow that achieves the repetitive impact of similarly sparse dialogue in Pinter and Beckett. Gielgud and Richardson are a beautifully complementary pair, the dandy and the tradesman, Gielgud's elevated clarinet tones v. Richardson's deeper bassoon. When Gielgud narrows his eyes he seems to be glimpsing the Elysian Fields; when Richardson widens his, he seems to be devouring a plate of sausages. Gielgud has a troubled introspective psyche; Richardson tries...
Director Peter Hall, who has successfully directed Pinter and Shakespeare onstage, gives the action an occasional jolt of adrenaline. Ursula Andress, whose role seems to consist entirely of turning inusually nakedis easy on the eyes and, for once, also on the credulity. The man who steals the show, if not the bank's money, is David Warner of England's Royal Shakespeare Company, who swoops and camps around in the perfect comic caricature of the decadent nobleman...
...drama is saturated with fascinating Oedipal byplay and lit throughout with sudden match flares of humor. Saved would not be a matter of theatrical moment except that Edward Bond possesses a genuine dramatic imagination and the makings of a formidable playwright. His best dialogue is equal to Pinter's, and he can match Beckett when it comes to peering into the abyss of existence. While not as fine a playwright as either, he has something that the two greater dramatists lack: a keen sense of man as a social being...
Cosmic Confrontation. Pinter operates in isolation cells of intense domesticity. If there is a world outside the womb walls of his plays, no one could guess it. Beckett is in a paralyzed eye-socket-to-eye-socket confrontation with a cosmos vacated by God. He refuses to move beyond his grief. Bond says, in effect: "O.K., God is dead, but we've got to work out an ethic whereby we can survive on this planet with some degree of decency." Unlike Pinter, who seems to accept violence as a norm, Bond indicts the value vacuum and brutal boredom...
HUGH WHEELER'S screenplay is shot through with lurid wit, and Harold Prince, though he is slow setting the narrative in motion, soon enough hits a satisfying, brisk pace. The product has an elegant playfulness which spares it from the pall which pervades black comedy of the Losey-Pinter genre. Contributing to the atmosphere of levity are Heidelinde Weiss as the voyeur daughter and Anthony Corlan as the homosexual son. They give two wildly funny performances...