Pieces of Pinter

Sale & Altrincham Messenger's comments:-

'A mixed bag'

By Rick Bowen

Pieces of Pinter, currently playing at the Lauriston Studio, is something of a mixed bag.

Some of the sketches featured in the first half are inspired pieces of work, while others are eminently forgettable.

The best by far is Victoria Station, a delightfully off the wall piece centreing around a conversation between a taxi company owner and one of his, shall we say, more unusual employees. I won’t reveal what happens in their surreal conversation but it’s totally hilarious and expertly played by Geoff Holman and an off stage Bryn Thomas.

If the sketches are the theatrical equivalent of a mixed starter, A Kind Of Alaska, performed after the interval, is definitely the main course. A haunting and engrossing little play, it’s the story of Deborah, a character who has been in a coma for nearly three decades and her painful struggle to come to terms with a much changed real world. This is an unsettling and yet strangely beautiful piece of writing, with Harold Pinter using dialogue to plant some arresting images inside your head. The performances of Beverley Stuart Cole (Deborah) and Bryn Thomas and Tracy Burns as Deborah’s doctor and devoted sister are effortlessly believable, a tribute to the skills of Geoff Holman, who has also directed this eagerly awaited Pinter fest.

If you go down to the Lauriston this week I guarantee you’ll leave looking at the late, great Harold Pinter in a totally new light. As for me, I think we’ll never see his like again - Pinter was a one off.