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t
h e a t r e
One for the Road
One for the Road and Victoria Station,
by Harold Pinter
(the inquisitor Nicholas, above; the cabbie)
1984, Lyric Studio, Hammersmith
directed by Harold Pinter
In Simon Gray's "An Unnatural Pursuit & Other
Pieces" (1985 St. Martin's Press),
a journal he kept during the writing and production of "The
Common Pursuit,"
he says this about Pinter's short play "One for the Road":
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- 21 MARCH. Last Wednesday I saw a preview--the last preview,
in fact--of "One for the Road." It's a concussive twenty-five
minutes. Harold's direction is impeccable, every movement of
the actors informed with meaning, not a detail left loose, not
a gesture haphazard or lacking in eloquence. I wonder though,
my reaction to the play on the page being what it was, whether
the director hasn't slightly straitjacketed the writer. The terrifying,
sometimes exhilarating, lunacy of the torturer has been subdued
into a calculating sadism. We don't want to share the life of
this creature, watching him from as far away as we can
get, hypnotized, as if expecting to be his next victims. ...
Alan [Bates], who I had thought a natural for the part in his
easy extravagance, his charm, his gift for flirting dangerously
with the audience, gives the most restrained and consequently
the most violent and hateful performance of his career. This
is clearly what both he and Harold intended, or came to during
rehearsals, and perhaps they're right.
 ...I had a brief drink with Harold at the
bar, and noticed that Harold has set himself and others a social
problem. He can hardly stand at the bar as if in celebration
of a work achieved, given the intended effect of the work. And
friends can hardly present themselves to him with grins of congratulations,
slaps on the back and so forth (Though I can't recall ever seeing
anyone slap Harold on the back.)
-
- 30 March. ...We then went to the theatre, arriving just as
the cast of "One for the Road" was emerging into the
bar. The actors, having now played the piece often enough to
adjust their lives to horror at midday, are beginning to relax.
In fact Alan looked quite jovial after twenty-five minutes of
concentrated sadism...
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- from New Statesman, 23.iv.84
-
- by Rosalind Carne
-
- "One for the Road". One image lingers indelibly
-- Alan Bates, sleek, calm and vicious, drinking whisky, treading
the thick carpet, circling his wounded victim with the casual
sadism of absolute power. Pinter has moved defiantly into the
political arena, accompanied by anxious murmurings from his devotees
that, by taking on the mantle of Amnesty International, he may
lose the touch of genius with which he illumines the despair
and the power games of less obviously charged situations.
- But the old concerns remain:
the tense psychological confrontation in a single room which
comes to signify more than mere geographical location, the importance
of tiny gestures and apparently offhand remarks. In some ways,
this new piece is an ironic comment on the writer's method, as
the interrogator picks holes inhis captives' clear statements,
simply to wear down their resistance. However, there is, unusually
for Pinter, no space for ambiguity about the moral slant of the
play.
- Victor (Roger Lloyd Pack) hobbles
in on bare bloodied feet, clutching his torn trousers and holding
up his head in an effort of agony. He is almost silent as Nicholas
(Bates), representative of an unnamed dictatorship, mingles pointed
accusations with the silken urbanities of cocktail-party chatter,
taunting him with trivia, torturing him with references to his
wife, imprisoned elsewhere in the same building. Victor's seven-year-old
son and wife (Jenny Quayle) are separately questioned with a
structural clarity that mirrors the play's documentary feel.
Leaving the theatre I found myself thinking, as so often with
Pinter, "Yes...but why?", only to realise later that,
in this case, "Why?" was exactly what the play, so
terrifyingly, asks.
-
- "Victoria Station" is a revival, first seen
at the Cottesloe, where I found it slight and gimmicky. In the
more intimate setting of the Lyric Studio, directed by the author
and with Bates once again in the lead, it acquires additional
force. It certainly requires an actor of his depth and capacity
for detail to convey, from behind the windscreen of a mini-cab,
the sense of a character possessed with all the symptoms of amnesia.
The almost static scenario consists entirely of bizarre radio
communication between the cabbie and his controller.
- Hammersmith workers may find
their humdrum afternoons taking on an unfamiliar, surreal quality
after lunch-time exposure to this exceptionally potent double
bill.
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-
- In 1985, critic Benedict Nightingale interviewed Harold Pinter
as "One for the Road" was being performed in New York.
The 48-minute interview includes a discussion of the play; Pinter's
political activism and its influence on his writing; comments
about other playwrights; and questions from the audience.
A videotape of the interview is available
for rental from the Audio-Visual Services department of Penn
State University, 800-826-0132. The sound quality is not great,
but it is of interest to students of Pinter's work and political
theatre in general.
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