✭✭✭✭✩ / ✭✭✭✭✭

written by Harold Pinter, directed by Ted Dykstra /

written by Edward Albee, directed by Diana Leblanc

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Harbourfront Theatre Centre, Toronto

July 14-August 17, 2004

Both plays on Soulpepper’s invigorating double-bill, written within five years of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1954, clearly show its influence.  They also provide an ideal showcase for outstanding performances by Soulpepper regulars Michael Hanrahan and Stuart Hughes.

In the Pinter, two hitmen, one younger (Hughes), one older (Hanrahan), await orders in a dingy basement.  The orders they receive, however, are for food via a dumb waiter sent from the defunct restaurant above.  In the Albee, a reticent, well-to-do publisher (Hanrahan) tries to read on a bench in Central Park, when a strange young man (Hughes) approaches him and tells anecdotes from his dreary life with an unexpected purpose in mind. 

The isolated settings, waiting as action, language as a means of manipulation not communication, the sense of existence as meaningless—all these can be traced to Godot.  Pinter’s language is closer to Beckett’s in it use of long pauses to isolate phrases and generate tension, while Albee’s characters need to tell tales to affirm their existence.

Directing the Pinter, Ted Dykstra often emphasizes the humour at the expense of the atmosphere of menace that should accompany it.  Directing the Albee, Diana Leblanc generates both humour as well as increasing anxiety from what seems a simple encounter.  Hughes plays the more talkative character in both plays but really shines in the Albee where chasms of loneliness and fear open beneath the deceptively assured surface chatter.  Hanrahan is the perfect foil for Hughes, comically uptight in Albee, ambiguously taciturn in Pinter.  This fine double-bill cements Soulpepper’s position as the best English-language forum for Beckett and his heirs in Canada.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2004-07-22.

Photo: Stuart Hughes and Michael Hanrahan. ©2004 Guntar Kravis.