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Is Pinter passe? Eclectic Theater doesn't think so

Is Pinter passe? Eclectic Theater doesn't think so image
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21
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July
Year
1985
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT

Is Pinter passe? Eclectic Theater doesn't think so

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER

NEWS ARTS WRITER

PREVIEW

Harold Pinter passe? Not on your life, says Will Cares.

“I don’t like ranking playwrights,” explains director Cares, whose Eclectic Theater Company will present “An Evening of Pinter” Thursday through Sunday at Performance Network. “But Pinter is as important a playwright as we have living now. His work is just as relevant today as it ever was.”

That’s high praise indeed these days for arcane Britisher Pinter (“The Homecoming,” "Betrayal” et al), whose sparsely worded domestic riddles were the theatrical rage of the ’60s and early ’70s, but have faded perceptibly in critical esteem during the last decade or so.

That fact troubles Eclectic’s Cares, who fears Pinter often doesn’t get a fair shake. “I think he’s one of the few artists objectively evaluating the way people relate. You see a lot of playwrights who are very ideological, others who are very romantic - in other words, dealing with subjects that get very hazy.

“But Pinter’s plays are about things you can feel, things you can get a grasp on. He bases his work on what every great playwright bases on - human nature.”

Cares and Eclectic producer Grace Marshall will share directing duties on four short, two-character revue sketches (out of a series of eight) that Pinter wrote for radio during the mid-’60s. “Special Offer” consists of a secretary delivering a chit-chatty monologue on a bizarre subject ("It’s a surprise,” says Marshall of the subject); “Trouble in the Works” involves a crisis between workers and management in fantasy machine-parts factory; “The Applicant” features a female interviewer bedeviling a male job-seeker, and “Night” brings us a couple recalling totally differing versions of the same events in their past.

While Cares concedes some of Pinter’s original eight sketches are “obscure,” the director insists “there’s an incredible amount of stuff going on in them.

“The actual dialogue is there to give cover. Pinter talks about people not wanting to be known, and that knowledge is one of the real weapons people use against each other. In his plays, people are evading, constantly trying to stay on top. There’s a dominance-submission relationship in every single one of his plays.”

That certainly holds true for “The Collection,” which forms the second half of Eclectic’s Pinter evening. Written for television in 1961, the play dissects the genteel but savage power plays exerted by four characters - a straight and gay couple - when their romantic lives suddenly intersect.

Says Cares, “One critic called the play one of Pinter’s ‘comedies of menace,’ and I really think that kind of hits it. It’s very funny in many ways, but there’s a real viciousness that runs just under the surface.

“(In ‘The Collection,’) he’s talking about the ways in which people decide either to communicate or not communicate. They’re constantly trying to remain in power, trying to keep some kind of hold on the others. It’s like trying to find out as much as you can about the other person without being known. It’s a common theme throughout. I think this play’s very well structured; it has a good pace to it.”

Pace, of course, is a central ingredient in any Pinter show. “I’ve been putting a lot of stress on pauses,” says Cares, “length of pauses, and getting them to be charged pauses, not dead silence. Pinter’s silences brim over with possibilities and meanings. That’s what he’s after.”

Even so. Cares suggests the playwright is often over-analyzed by critics. “He once said his plays were all about ‘the weasel under the cocktail cabinet.’ I think that was his way of saying, ‘Get away, don’t try to find out what my plays are about.’ He’s such an intuitive writer, he’s often not aware of what experiences he’s drawing from. Still, there is so much depth to his work.”

The Eclectic Theater Company will present ‘An Evening of Pinter,’ Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m. at Performance Network, 408 W. Washington St. For ticket information, call 663-0681.