Word: pinter
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...first act closes, Pinter redoubles his attacks on our expectations. People don't answer when spoken to, or if they do, they respond by talking about a totally different subject. Max begins a sentence with, "your mother was a lovely woman" and ends by denouncing that same lovely woman as a "slut-bitch". And throughout, Pinter maintains a delicate balance of humor and menace. In the midst of a conversation filled with small-talk, Lenny suddenly describes to Ruth his brutal beating of a woman the day before: "Well, she was standing up against this wall, see? No, actually...
...second act opens another front of Pinter's war on our intellectual complacency. The question is no longer simply "Why are they acting like that?", but has become even more basic: "Is this real or is this fantasy?" The absurdity of the situation grows stronger with each new turn of events; Lenny coolly makes his proposition, Ruth Coolly accepts it, and Teddy remains absolutely unconcerned. The family even asks Teddy if he wants to act as Ruth's "representative in the States", a kind of international pimp. Max laughs: "Why, Pan Am ought to give us a discount...
...more complex. Perhaps the play is a fantasy--the wish-fulfilling Oedipal dream of the sons to depose their father and have sex with their mother (Ruth is the mother-substitute). Or perhaps one should stop trying to categorize the play as reality or fantasy and listen to Pinter himself: "There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false...
...Marlboro Theater Company's production captures the ambivalence of the play, and its lack of motivational explanation. The first act, which can have a tendency to move slowly and become tedious, is handled extremely well, largely because the Company manages to maintain Pinter's mix of terror and humor, so necessary for the initial attack on the "interpreters" in the audience. John Devany, as Max, shifts easily between the ranting, boastful, tough old man and the kindhearted, proud father whom Pinter has created, a difficult task when the character you portray seems to shift his personality for no reason. Hillary...
...McDonald's Lenny, while lacking in the sleekness one expects from the suggestion that he is a big-time pimp, is still quite good. There is one particularly fine interplay between Lenny, Ruth, their dialogue, and a pair of inanimate objects (a glass and an ashtray) which illustrates Pinter's capacity to utilize all the elements of production at his disposal. Lenny suddenly, and inexplicably, becomes insistent upon removing a glass he had given Ruth. "I'll take it," he demands, and she replies: "If you take it...I'll take you." The effect of this first sensual suggestion...