A pairing of opposites that rests on a knife's edge.
Not seen together since 1984, Victoria Station and One for the Road make for strange bedfellows on paper. The first a brief, funny vignette with a darker underbelly and the latter a politically incensed and brutal study of torture practices, they would not seem to share much in common. The Print Room's powerful and disturbing double bill, however, makes a striking case for this pairing of opposites.
The audience are not given even the briefest of respites in a production that places its spectators firmly within the sphere of Pinter's painful power struggles. As we file slowly into The Print Room's bare white space, actor Kevin Doyle is splayed out uncomfortably on a glass desk, his arms at odd angles in awkward rag-doll style, generating an immediately unsettling presence. So begins Victoria Station and the subsequent relentless fifty minutes is played straight through, with not a moment to relax and break director Jeff James' carefully wrought tension.
Teetering on a knife's edge between comedy and something altogether darker, Victoria Station functions as a verbal tennis match between Doyle's taxi driver and his office controller, played with writhing frustration by Keith Dunphy. Sat at opposite ends of the small space, boxing contestants in their respective corners, Dunphy hurls demands and insults at his microphone while Doyle responds with a mixture of bewilderment and desperation. Laughs are hard and fast, but they are often succeeded by a stealthy injection of discomfort, as James skilfully executes a steady descent into menace that paves the way for One for the Road.
In Pinter's outraged study of the abuse of political power, sadistic interrogator Nicolas questions a family one by one, slowly breaking down their mental reserves while torture is practised off-stage. Doyle's impressive transformation from lost and lonely taxi driver to power-crazed tormentor is a fitting demonstration of how, in Pinter's world, all individuals lust for power and will seize the chance to exercise it. Doyle comes into his own as an unpredictable Nicolas, veering wildly between deceptive calm and frenzied energy that occasionally escapes in bursts of maniacal laughter. Dunphy is less convincing as his despairing victim, the ironically-named Victor.
Alex Lowde's simple design of glass and metal creates a bleak and clinical space that enhances the sense of unease, while this minimalist approach emphasises Pinter's point that Nicolas' interrogation room could be anywhere and any time. Mischa Twitchin's stark strip-lighting leaves audience members exposed and somehow complicit in the on-stage action.
When placed in Nicolas' hands, lights shine brutally in the face of Victor's wife Gila (a suitably wretched and broken Anna Hewson) and evoke an odd marriage of the interrogation room and the movie set, combining intimidation and objectification.
While respecting both pieces, James has not been a slave to Pinter's formidable reputation in his direction and finds room to provide his own stamp. Although he has regrettably rushed over some of Pinter's most disturbing and menace-laden lines. Nonetheless, this double bill puts forward a convincing argument for these two pieces to be united demonstrates that the years have certainly not eroded the potency of Pinter's drama.
Victoria Starion & One for the Road run at The Print Room until 1st October then at the Young Vic from 6th - 15th October.
Click here for more on Harold Pinter, or if you'd rather read more about The Print Room, see our interview with Co-artistic director Anda Winters.
Image by Sheila Burnett
Click here for Theatre in London
Click here for Things to do in London
Add an event
Review: The Company You Keep
Robert Redford, an iconic face of Western cinema whose influence for decades has weighe...