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| Tony Tanner, Danny Sewell, Norman Barrs, (front) Eric Berry, Lawrence Keith, Janice Rule |
Mixed reviews greeted this Pinter masterpiece of sexual and
familial tension in its first New York revival since the outstanding Royal
Shakespeare Company production, directed by Peter Hall, opened in New York in
1967, only a few years earlier. Director Jerry Adler had served that
presentation as production manager, leading several critics to note the
similarities between the RSC version and his.
Lee Silver said he thought the play a vacuum at heart, but
considered it “tautly staged, splendidly performed.” Richard Watts, Jr.,
applauded it as “forcefully revived,” while Jack Kroll considered it acceptable but
inferior to the earlier staging. Martin Gottfried, however, said it was an “excellent
revival . . . , one so lucid that you can look through its glassiness to see
each layer of impulse, feeling and story in the play.” However, a few, like
Walter Kerr, felt the result was too literal, thus robbing the work of its
deliberate ambiguity.
Least enthused were critics Edith Oliver and John Simon. The
former rated the production as “tame,” while the latter, an avowed
anti-Pinterite, averred that the play “does not make sense,” it is too imbued
with “the latent homosexuality” he saw in much of the playwright’s work, and rebuked
this mounting as “one part carbon copy of Peter Hall’s, one part old gags, and
two parts deadly stasis.”
The company included Eric Berry as Max, Tony Tanner as
Lenny, Norman Barrs as Sam, Lawrence Keith as Teddy, Janice Rule as Ruth, and
Danny Sewell as Joey. Sewell was good enough to receive an OBIE for
Distinguished Performance.