A Conversation with Harold Pinter for Adelaide

Playwright Harold Pinter asserted, ‘One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.’ These words make a soon to be produced one act play seem very intriguing indeed, because the work is titled A Conversation with Harold Pinter. SA’s Pinter fans can see it as part of new SA theatre company Sealand Theatre’s first season. Lesley Reed reports.

Written by Kathryn Pentecost and actor/director/filmmaker John Rado in 1987 and recently updated, A Conversation with Harold Pinter originated from Pentecost’s and Rado’s creative obsession with Pinter's work. Each has played in and directed various Pinter pieces, including Night, Request Stop, Black and White and The Collection.Their one-act play parodies Pinter's Betrayal and its theme of infidelity. It also pays homage to the famous British playwright by being written in the style of Pinter’s own work.

While John Rado is currently General Manager of Sprung Integrated Dance Theatre in NSW, the play’s other writer Kathryn Pentecost is now Sealand Theatre’s Artistic Director. The new SA theatre company will produce A Conversation with Harold Pinter for one night only at 7pm on Thursday 26 November 2015, as part of Sealand Theatre's first season of performances. The play will be staged in the Soldiers Memorial Institute in Second Valley and be accompanied by a talk about Pinter's work, together with a supper.

This is the first stage version of the play to be produced in South Australia and it will be directed by Pentecost. “The mention of the Adelaide production of Betrayal a few months ago, was perhaps the trigger for this revival of A Conversation with Harold Pinter,” she said. “Two radio versions have been aired: one in Sydney and one in Katoomba. Although this (stage) show is only a one-off, there are plans to tour it in the future.”

The play is essentially a two-hander, apart from a small waitress role, with Dicky (played by Peter Gates) running into Harry (played by Terry McEwen) in an upmarket pub, where they converse over lunch. What starts as a spontaneous reunion of old mates turns into something potentially darker as the two men spar over past and present relationships.

“Gates and McEwen are naturally well-contrasted and their dynamic brings freshness to a play,” said Pentecost, who is a dynamic individual herself. She is most recently known for producing the sold-out show My Passionate Philosophy for Festival Fleurieu in April this year, but her theatre and film background stretches back many years, predominantly in NSW.

Sealand Theatre is based in Second Valley, utilising the talents of local people in the area together with some actors from further afield. The company aims to promote the wellbeing of the community via participation in the arts, to foster the development of new creative works and to give voice to emerging and/ or non-mainstream points of view, particularly in respect to matters humanitarian, ecological, spiritual, political, cultural and/or intuitive.

It is interesting that this last aim in particular aligns with that of Harold Pinter, who was also known as a humanitarian and an outspoken political activist.

Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, London in 1930. In a writing career that spanned 50 years, the Nobel Prize winning playwright began his career as an actor and also worked as a director and screenwriter. Influenced by Samuel Beckett and others, Pinter’s work is perhaps most well-known for its deliberate pauses and often seemingly mundane dialogue in which the undercurrent can be very menacing, as in The Birthday Party. Some have described his early work as ‘comedy of menace’. Later works, such as No Man’s Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) have become known as ‘memory plays’ – though the interpretation of Pinter’s works can create contention amongst reviewers, scholars and drama critics.

Pinter buffs and all people interested in intriguing theatre will surely discover a trip to Second Valley to see A Conversation with Harold Pinter has been very worthwhile and enjoyable indeed.

WHEN: Thursday 26 November at 7pm

WHERE: Soldiers Memorial Institute Second Valley- opposite Leonards Mill.

Tea, coffee & sandwiches in the interval.

TICKETS: $20 - group tables, BYO alcohol.

BOOKING: Phone/text Kathryn Pentecost on 0457 863 272 or email kathrynpentecost@hotmail.com