Pinter Project
The Reviews Are In!
“…Kansas City Actors Theatre is presenting a rare treat for these parts: not one but four of Pinter’s plays, including his celebrated early work The Birthday Party, in absolutely top-drawer – and delightfully funny – performances that will keep me pondering for months to come.”
Paul Horsley, The Independent“…some exceptional performances and consistently captures Pinter’s unpredictable sense of humor.”
Robert Trussell, The Kansas City Star“Pinter’s stubborn refusal to “explain” who the characters really are or where they come from makes for fascinating theater.”
Robert Trussell, The Kansas City Star (‘Birthday Party’)
“In these sharp, refined dramas, the KCAT proves itself as possibly the strongest ensemble in town.”
The Birthday Party
Directed by Bruce Roach
Two Shows in Rotating Repertory!
August 16 – September 11, 2011
Union Station’s H&R Block City Stage
The Birthday Party was the first full-length offering from British playwright Harold Pinter, who is now widely regarded as the theatre’s master of enigma and menace. The play takes us to a godforsaken seaside guest house run by Meg and her husband Petey. The only guest is Stanley, a former pianist with a shady past, upon whom Meg dotes. Into this uneasy family come two additional guests, a pair of suspiciously underworldly types who seem to have some unfinished business with Stanley. The style of The Birthday Party swings from the broadly comic to the deeply unnerving, with a nod to the absurd along the way. It’s easy to see why The Sunday Times critic Harold Hobson, responding to the first production of The Birthday Party, wrote that “Pinter, on the evidence of this work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.”
“A haunting and very amusing play…there is a shiver beneath the laughter.”
– Mel Gussow, The New York Times
The Lover, The Collection, & Night
Two Shows in Rotating Repertory!
The Collection
James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Brian Paulette*
Stella . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carla Noack*
Harry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Gibby Brand*
Bill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TJ Chasteen
The Lover
Sarah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melinda McCrary*
Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Robbins*
John, The Milkman . . . . . TJ Chasteen / Brian Paulette*
Night
Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Rensenhouse*
Woman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carla Noack*
August 18 – September 11, 2011
Union Station’s H&R Block City Stage
The Collection focuses on sexual relationships—hetero-, homo- and bi—and shows us the corrosive effects of jealousy and suspicion. The play brings us into the lives of two couples: Bill is a young fashion designer who lives with his older partner, Harry. Across town, Stella, also in the fashion business, lives with her husband Jimmy. A whispered account of a sexual liaison between members of these two households kicks off the action of the play in which mysterious visits and phone calls occur, threats are made, and blood is drawn. The Collection is replete with Harold Pinter’s signature mix of menace and wit, and Pinter’s skill with language heightens the erotic charge that flows among this quartet.
Like The Collection, The Lover centers on extra-marital affairs, but with many more unexpected twists and turns. Richard and Sarah are a couple enjoying a pleasant, if somewhat staid, married life. He works and she keeps house. The unconventional aspect of their relationship is in the fact that they both have lovers, and are quite willing to share information about them with each other. As the play progresses it becomes clear that Richard and Sarah are perhaps not as sanguine about this state of “affairs” as they pretend to be. The Lover explores desire, love, identity, and the lengths people will go to keep a marriage alive, all with Pinter’s usual mixture of laughter and danger.
In his short play Night, Pinter gives us a married couple who, over coffee, reminisce about their first intimate encounter. The thing is, their memories of the moment are strikingly different. The differences in their recollections reflect the differences between the sexes, as seen through Pinter’s incisive vision. Alastair Macaulay of the NY Times wrote, “He is, it often seems, the last modernist, the last classicist, and, in plays like Night, the last romantic.”
“ No matter how you look at it, all the emotions connected with love are not really immortal. Like all other passions in life, they are bound to fade at some point. The trick is to convert love into some lasting friendship that overcomes the fading passion.”
-Harold Pinter
