Playwright: Harold Pinter. At: Remy Bumppo Theatre at the Greenhouse, 1229 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-404-7336; $35-$45 Runs through: May 31. Photos courtesy Remy Bumppo Theatre Company
Audiences still pondering the multiple subtexts in the non-Equity production of this play being presented at City Lit for one more week can expand their cogitations with Remy Bumppo's freshly-mounted interpretation. Not that further examination will resolve the questions asked in this three-hander puzzle—this is Pinter, after all, as frustratingly enigmatic in death as he was in life.
The dramatic action encompasses a reunion at the remote seaside home of Deeley and Kate, married for 20 years. The guest is Anna, now living a glamorous life in Italy, but who once shared a London flat with Kate during the housing shortage following World War II. As the women reminisce nostalgically on their romantic bachelorette days, Deeley becomes increasingly resentful of the sororal bond they still share. Soon he and Anna are engaged in a grimly tenacious conversational duel for the affections of the bemused Kate.
Does incorporating oneself into someone else's memory ( as in "Oh, I was there, too!" ) constitute an assertion of power? Why do husbands often grow uneasy upon discovering that their wives had lives before their weddings? ( As Oscar Wilde observed, "Men always want to be a woman's first love, but women want be a man's last." ) Are the characters actually as we see them, or is one—maybe more—of them a fantasy, invoked for the amusement or torment of the fantasizer? Do ghosts dwell only in the minds of their surviving comrades, and do these spirits then visit the living in order to ensure that they are not forgotten? And how much, really, do you know about your sig other, anyway?
Individual playgoers will decide the answer according to their own satisfaction, but as soon as the curtain rises on the reliable tag team of Nick Sandys and Linda Gillum—Chicago Theatre's William Powell and Myrna Loy—we know to expect razor-edged repartee swapped with a tension, precision and erotically-charged chemistry so palpable as to throw off sparks. Sandys and Gillum fulfill their promise ( the latter with a delightful hint of a plebeian accent, courtesy of dialect consultant Eve Breneman ) , but at no time does director James Bohnen allow Deeley and Anna's rapier-like wordplay to reduce Jenny McKnight's Kate to a mere McGuffin, nor the stage picture to talking-heads stasis. Add a dribble or two of Victoria DeIorio's Hitchcockian incidental music, and the results make for a riveting 75 minutes ( that's with an intermission ) of tantalizing, deceptively commonplace, mystery.