The Drama Of Ageing Laid Bare
The Age
Saturday June 30, 2007
A SLIGHT ACHE
By Harold Pinter, If Theatre, Chapel Off Chapel, 12 Little Chapel Street, Prahran. Until July 1. Running time: 70 minutes www.Iftheatre.blogspot.comONCE, when asked what his plays were about, Pinter replied: "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet". Though it annoyed him that this flippancy was taken seriously, it was a revealing response. Pinter's work often ferrets out the absurd in the familiar, and is always, in a central way, deliberately ambiguous.A Slight Ache (1958) fits precisely into this mould. Originally conceived as a radio play, it was written when the playwright was at the height of his powers. It's set in an English country house owned by Edward (Lawrence Price) and his wife Flora (Lou Endicott). They pass the time tending the garden and arguing over the plants. Other than the occasional wasp in the marmalade, it's an idyllic existence.But Edward becomes obsessed by a match-seller (Troy Larkin) - an old man, part-blind and mostly deaf, who loiters near their back gate. Convinced the match-seller is a fraud, Edward begins to spy on him, and eventually invites him in and confronts him. In a bizarre sequence, Flora attempts to seduce the match-seller. And Edward, having failed to get a single word out of their strange guest, succumbs to a torrent of nostalgia. The final, enigmatic twist sees Flora run off with the match-seller, while Edward trades places with him.Does the match-seller represent old age, or is he the spectre of death itself? Has Flora died, and left her brittle, paranoid husk of a husband behind to comfort himself in delusions? Or does Edward - who talks in platitudes about the present, waxes lyrical about the past, and approaches the future with paralysing dread - lose her because he's so afraid of losing her that he stops appreciating what he has? If Theatre's production naturally leaves such questions open. But it could have dramatised them more sharply. It gets off to a good start: Price and Endicott develop an amusing domestic rhythm, and handle Pinter's pauses to perfection. But the precision of the initial comedy isn't sustained through the drama that follows, and there's some fearful overacting.Basically, Matt Scholten has a wonderful ear for dialogue, but he's hamstrung here by the youth of his actors. Given that ageing is one of the play's pivotal concerns, an older cast who had lived and suffered more might have made the play more credible and affecting. But despite its problems this production does attempt a serious critical engagement with the play's themes, which are visually underscored by Shayne Greenman's set, with its denuded shrubs and window opening onto a brick wall.
© 2007 The Age