Specifically, Pinter's fear of authoritarian regimes, which feels ever more justified and prescient. To make sure there's no suggestion these stories are set at a comfortable distance patriotic music and hymns play as the audience enters, discordant noises breaking into them more and more until red, white and blue confetti greets Jonjo O'Neill's Minister giving the opening Press Conference.
The former head of the Secret Police, he's the new Minister for Culture and plans to run that job with the same iron fist as the last one. Torture is a running theme in the first act - its effects rarely seen onstage, but the vaguest of threats of it serving the purpose - as in The New World Order in which a naked man (Jonathan Glew) sits tied to a chair while O'Neill and Paapa Essiedu talk about the fact that unnamed things will happen to the man and his family. In Mountain Language Essiedu is a prisoner who certainly has been physically harmed as well, but part of the state's oppressive regime includes banning the language spoken by dissidents in the mountains, meaning he can't even communicate with his mother (Maggie Steed.)
Essiedu will later play another prisoner, this time tortured by the sound of a drowning wookie, as One for the Road sees a child (Quentin Deborne) disrespecting the soldiers, leading to him and his parents (Essiedu and Kate O'Flynn) being imprisoned for it, and questioned by Nicolas (Antony Sher.) This is the only one of these short plays I'd seen before, although not much apart from the interrogator's constantly returning to his bottle of scotch rang any bells; it does sound like the previous production I saw was very different, and it makes me wonder if Lloyd could also have done with throwing a couple more different styles into the mix. If most of the evening could be set in an alternate or future UK, the USA isn't entirely let off the hook: The sketch The Pres and an Officer features O'Neill in the latter role and a rotating cast of guest stars (Rufus Hound tonight) as the American President; if making overt Trump references is getting old hat, you can let this instance slide as Pinter's comic sketch is such a good fit.
The cast actually take their bow at the interval as most of them won't be needed for the second act (and Sher needs to go off and do publicity for his new album of ABBA covers.) For the longest play of the evening, Lia Williams takes over directing duties, Soutra Gilmour's grey revolving box set is stripped right back and O'Flynn and Essiedu play Rebecca and Devlin in Ashes to Ashes. Here too are suggestions of the characters living in a police state - there are references to women having their babies snatched from them by the authorities - but whether this is real or in Rebecca's mind is ambiguous. Confronted by her husband after an affair with a man who nearly killed her, her sanity seems to be unravelling.
As an opener to the season this collection of plays and poems isn't exactly an obvious crowd-pleaser; of course you could say that of the whole season, Lloyd's ability to tempt big names being the main selling point (even the unseen guard in Mountain Language is a pre-recorded Michael Gambon.) In a way the shared threads running through these nine pieces make them a logical collection to put together, but they do cover a lot of the same ground, and while Lloyd and Williams bring out Pinter's notorious ability to crreate tension out of unseen, unnamed threats, I could have done with a few more twists and experiments in style to stop them all blending into one.
Pinter One - Press Conference / Precisely / The New World Order / Mountain Language / American Football / The Pres and an Officer / Death / One for the Road / Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter is booking in repertory until the 20th of October at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
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