Being Harold Pinter - Sydney Festival
From the last dictatorship in Europe comes a show about violence and intimidation.
By Nick Dent
Belarus Free Theatre's show sounds like a tough sell. Put it this way: it's performed in Russian, and uses the work of a (recently deceased) English playwright to talk about oppression in Belarus. You don't have to be conversant in Harold Pinter's plays to enjoy the show (or Russian for that matter – there are surtitles), but it helps. Even then, you have to keep your wits about you to spot the connections between Pinter's ideas and the stifling of opposition in the former Soviet state, where the members of this company are considered dissidents and have to perform in secret.
Raised in the rough East End of London, Harold Pinter (1930-2008) arrived on the London theatre scene in the 1950s with plays such as The Birthday Party and The Caretaker - menacing domestic dramas in which people jostle for power over each other using the weapons of language. Pinter's later writing evolved from kitchen sink to explicitly political theatre such as The New World Order, a ten-minute scene of interrogators discussing what they're going to do to their blindfolded victim. His work is all about control through intimidation.
In Being Harold Pinter, seven actors perform bits from several Pinter plays, followed by a sequence quoting from the letters of Belarussian political prisoners describing their ill-treatment. The scenes are linked by actor Oleg Sidorchik playing Harold Pinter himself, quoting the playwright's acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. This speech - essentially a jeremiad against the US-led invasion of Iraq - champions drama as a means of illuminating the truth when it's in the interests of the powerful to obscure it. "If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision," he says, "we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man."
Adapted and directed by Vladimir Scherban, the performance is designed to work in private apartments and basements, and uses simple props - chairs, brandy glasses, a walking stick, a sheet of plastic - while two murals depicting Pinter's eyes overlook the scene. It's a brisk 80 minutes offering variations on the theme of brutality. The performances are impassioned, with male and female actors moving fluidly through roles of different gender and age.
You might expect a depiction of the violence and oppression in Belarus to be more forthright, not filtered through the prism of UK theatre culture. But here in Australia, where we're drowning in pop culture and blithe to international politics, it's easy to underestimate the importance a figure like Pinter might have for people in Belarus, a country where underground theatre performs a vital function. It's not the sort of show that any punter off the street can walk into and easily digest, but for the informed viewer Being Harold Pinter offers the rare thrill of witnessing an act of theatrical defiance.
Being Harold Pinter Belvoir St Theatre 28 Jan-1 Feb
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