Harold Pinter's 1959 play 'A Slight Ache' is presented at the Odyssey Theatre in a production featuring Susan Priver, Henry Olek and Shelly Kurtz.
The English dramatist’s original style changed the face of 20th century theater. As he wrote about oppression and censorship for the stage, he also lobbied for justice as a political activist.His manhood temporarily restored, Edward suffers an immediate setback when his wife notices him clenching his eyes. He begrudgingly acknowledges a slight ache in them. Her solicitude offends him. In Pinter, troubled vision is often associated with impotence and diminished vitality.
Edward fancies himself intellectual. He writes “theological and philosophical” essays — his current subject is “space and time” — though Africa has been a lifelong interest. A colonialist at heart, he is only truly at peace when subjugating, collecting and filing away. Conquering the Match Seller, who doesn’t speak a word throughout the play, becomes Edward’s chief obsession.
Pinter lets the situation accelerate along these lines, dramatizing the way both Edward and Flora project onto this hapless stranger all their fears and desires. The Match Seller becomes the battleground upon which they go to marital war. The boundary between realism and symbolism blurs until it dissolves almost completely.
Jeff G. Rack’s attractively furnished scenic design bears too much responsibility for summoning a milieu that should largely be conjured in chat. The characterizations of Flora and Edward are established more from Michael Mullen’s striking costumes than from the way they converse.
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