popplers

If this is "viral," I'd like the antidote

A few months ago, we went to see the Merrimack Repertory Theatre's production of The Homecoming, by Harold Pinter. It was, without a doubt, the least favorite play that I've ever seen, anywhere, ever.

This morning, I learned that Harold Pinter had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which means that there are an awful lot of articles gushing over how amazing he is:

Mr. Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," the Swedish Academy said in announcing the award, which carries $1.3 million in prize money.

And this one (also in the New York Times) with the headline A Creator of Theater That Seizes the Senses:

Great theater, the kind that changes the way you see and hear the world, acts like a benign virus. It creeps into the bloodstream, without your really knowing it, while you are watching a performance. Then it grows, it mutates, it seizes the senses. And often it won't leave you for hours, even days, after the curtain has come down.

Harold Pinter is the greatest living practitioner of viral theater. If a production of his "Homecoming," "Birthday Party" or "Betrayal" is even passably acted, you leave the theater with an overwhelming suspicion of everything and everyone around you. That includes yourself.

I have little doubt that MRT's version was more than passably acted. The cast, sets, props, lighting, and costumes were all fine. The only suspicion that I had upon leaving the theatre was that I'd just been conned into paying $50 to see a play that didn't make a particle of sense. The synopsis from this BBC Four film version makes it sound like a taut, gripping drama. But it's not— the characters' actions and motivations are baffling, the "pregnant pauses" did not seem fraught with meaning, and if I wanted to spend the evening with a dysfunctional family I'd stay home. To the Nobel Committee I say this: Feh.