The Games People Play in Two One-Act Pinter Plays: Party Time & The Lover

I first encountered the work of the British playwright, screenwriter and Nobel Prize winner 12 years ago, when Julian Sands presented A Celebration of Harold Pinter, directed by John Malkovich, as a fundraiser for the Odyssey Theatre. As I wrote at the time, in that benefit performance, “Sands occasionally gives raspy voice to that quick witted, temperamental English playwright, poet and actor, but does not depict him per se. Rather, this two-act production consists mostly of Sands appearing as himself while paying tribute to Pinter, with anecdotes of and about him (some drawn from the memoir of Pinter’s widow, Antonia Fraser), Pinter’s comments about contemporaries such as playwright Samuel Beckett… readings from some of the bard’s plays, which dominate the first act, and his poems, which form the bulk of act two.”

In the Celebration, “Sands [did] not dwell on Pinter’s progressive politics, nor shy away from them. He read with relish from Pinter’s searing poems Democracy and The Special Relationship and a passage from Harold’s courageously biting 2005 Nobel Lecture, Art, Truth and Politics, wherein, among other things, he ferociously snapped at those hellish hounds of war, Mssrs. Bush, Blair and company, for invading an Iraq that had not attacked either America or the U.K..” One can only imagine what Pinter, who alas died in 2008, would say about Washington’s unprovoked sneak attack on Iran?

Interestingly enough, the co-star of the first of the two one-act Pinter plays now on the boards at the Odyssey is British-Iranian actress Michelle Ghatan, and her character Dusty seems to be the only partygoer with a heart in Party Time. Pinter’s slyly subversive 30-ish minute piece does to those veddy British drawing room plays what The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface does to human beings. Although I hasten to add that this is not to say that Party Time is a horror production per se, but rather that it Pinteresquely piquantly slices and dices the genre conventions of Victorian era productions.

In fact, Pinter’s 1991 Party Time actually does take place in a drawing room, where visitors to a well-appointed manor in suburban London (where, according to the playbill, “Both plays take place in the present”) would be entertained. Gavin (Larry Eisenberg) is the host of this particular soiree for the posh set, where the champagne glasses clink and privileged Brits make chitchat about exclusive spas, private isles and past romances. Meanwhile, outside, a soundtrack suggests protests are taking place. The main indicator of this hubbub inside of the shindig is that Dusty repeatedly expresses anxiety about the whereabouts of her missing brother Jimmy (John Coady), although her overbearing husband Terry berates her, ordering his wife to do the English equivalent of “fuhgeddaboudit” and just enjoy the splendid party. As they say on South Park: “Relax!”

Paul Marius, Michelle Ghatan (left) • Ron Bottitta and Susan Priver (right)

Terry’s barking at Dusty is the male counterpart to henpecking (uh, would that be “cock-pecking”?). A nasty line of dialogue reveals Terry’s brutishness lurking not far beneath his elitist veneer and sneer. Rhapsodizing about the state of utter perfection at the private health club he belongs to, Terry snaps that they don’t allow bad behavior from anyone “and if they do we kick them in the balls and chuck them down the stairs with no trouble at all.” Nothing like British fair play, eh wot?

Of course, amidst the small talk exchanged between Melissa (Mouchette van Helsdingen, who just starred in An Inspector Calls, Liz (Michelle McGregor), Charlotte (Brenda James), Fred (Isaac W. Jay), and Douglas (Christopher Louis Parker), who do you suppose eventually shows up, bloodied presumably from streetfighting and wearing a T-shirt proclaiming something like resist like its 1938 in Germany, to crash the pretentious pompous party that is a Bunuelian allegory for the ruling class? As they in One Battle After Another: “Viva la revolución!”

The second of the Pinter one-acts is the deviously clever sex farce 1962’s The Lover, which must have been deemed quite risqué at the time. If the war between the sexes is a subplot in Party Time, sexual politics are front and center in The Lover. The topnotch English actor Ron Bottitta portrays Richard, a numbers cruncher for a firm in the city, which he commutes to daily, leaving his wife Sarah (Susan Priver) behind – but not necessarily alone – at their well-appointed home in the suburbs. Married now for 20 years, Richard and Sarah are well into middle age and have seen better days, especially Sarah who probably was a proverbial blonde bombshell back in the day, and is still quite lithe as she flirtatiously practices yoga stretches in a robe.

They both nonchalantly acknowledge an affair that Sarah purports to be having, what Blanche Du Bois would call “a gentleman caller,” entertaining him in the afternoons at home while Richard is away, working 9:00 – 5:00 at the office. (BTW, Priver actually played Tennessee Williams’ “heroine” in a 2019 production of A Streetcar Named Desire directed by none other than Jack Heller.) But the couple’s casual, even blithe, acceptance of Sarah’s infidelity belies what’s really going on between the husband and wife. I don’t want to spoil the theatergoer’s joy of discovery, so let’s just say that there’s more hanky-spanky going on here than meets the eye (and the ear, because some of it actually involves bongo drums!).

Ron Bottitta, who was so outstanding in Stephen Sachs’ superb January 6 riot play Fatherland that it traveled all the way from the Fountain Theatre to Off-Broadway, reveals the range of an acting virtuoso here in a totally different kind of role. Mr. Bottitta is certainly at the head of the pack of L.A.’s actors on the live stage. Holding her own opposite him, Susan Priver may give you the shivers as lusty slinky Sarah. As the characters indulge in their sex games, I’m not quite sure exactly what Pinter was trying to say here? That to keep the spark alive in their longtime, decades’ old marriage, a couple may need a strong dose of fantasy and role playing? In any case, it’s great arousing Rabelaisian fun, presented with even greater acting.

No, Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter is not directed by Steven Soderbergh, but by Jack Heller, who elicits finely wrought portraits from his casts in both one-acters. Set designer Joel Daavid perfectly captures the spirit and mood of the households of the British upper crust, even if those drawing rooms are inhabited by a bunch of crumbs. Should incisive writing, protest politics, skewering the bourgeoisie, subtle, supple acting and kinky role playing be your thing, make an odyssey to see this oddity at the Odyssey, sprint to view these Pinter plays.

Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter is a visiting production being performed on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. through April 26 at The Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles 90025.Reservations: OdysseyTheatre.com; 310.477.2055, ext. 2.