my night with harold
my night with harold
Writers: Marcel Dorney, Elise Hearst, Richard Jordan, Maxine Mellor
18 - 20 September 2009 Warehouse, Metro Arts
Featuring: Ron Kelly, Barbara Lowing, Emma Che Martin, Daniel Murphy, Francesca Savige and Kevin Spink
Director |
Andrea Moor |
| Set Designer | Ross Wallace |
| Lighting Designer | Jason Glenwright |
| Composer / Sound Design | Phil Hagstrom |
| Executive Producer / | |
| Production Manager | Kathryn Fray |
| Assistant Director | Christopher Sommers |
| Production Assistant / |
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| Stage Manager | Nicole Bilson |
| Saxophonist | Sean Dennis |
| Movement Director | Maartje Belmer |
| Secondment ASM | Katinka Allom |
| Stills Photographer | Sam Gardiner |
FOUR WRITERS ONE MASTER.
Harold: a man caught up in a dysfunctional family? A young passionate ideologist? A bold political activist? Or just a grumpy old bloke wanting to die peacefully in his pyjamas?
Four of Australia’s most exciting young writers Marcel Dorney, Elise Hearst, Richard Jordan and Maxine Mellor, invite you to spend time in the company of the master: Harold Pinter. Inspired by his life, his work and his death, this truly original piece of theatre is part homage, part inquiry and part very dramatic pause…
Images of MY NIGHT WITH HAROLD SEPTEMBER 2009
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Kevin Spink, Daniel Murphy and Emma Che Martin |
Daniel Murphy, Kevin Spink and Ron Kelly |
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Daniel Murphy |
Barbara Lowing |
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Kevin Spink and Ron Kelly |
Kevin Spink and Ron Kelly |
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review - my night with harold - Alison COats / a little gossip
Even getting to the venue is like walking into a Harold Pinter nightmare scenario. As you trudge up those endless flights of stairs to the top floor of the Metro Arts building (and God help you if you’re old, under the weather or wobbly-kneed, because nobody else will, and the lift isn’t operating), you wonder where you’re heading, and when you walk into the almost empty studio where the windows are blocked out by red paint with random letters forming words like Death and Dead Body, with five prisoners in orange jail overalls in various positions of abject helplessness and terror, all those clichés about pauses and silent menace that you’ve heard about Pinter suddenly come true, and you know you’re not in for a Nice Night at the Theatre.
“I’m smiling,” the Interrogator (Ron Kelly) says with a sinister lack of emotion to the blindfolded shackled prisoner (Kevin Spink), who shakes helplessly in silent terror. “Can you hear me?” This short sequence, the second in the production, was written by Marcel Dorney, and is set up perfectly by the longer opening sequence in the prison, written by Richard Jordan, where five of the actors are being questioned by a cold emotionless army official about their reasons for pleading conscientious objection to war.
But nothing dreadful happens, and each segment is left open-ended and with no resolution, so that the menace remain hovering in an atmosphere of unfinished business.
The scene morphs to the family dinner party from hell (Elise Hearst wrote this distressingly familiar segment), where the two adult children of a dysfunctional couple are doing the obligatory pacify-the-parents routine. Daughter Jane (Emma Che Martin) has brought along her piece of rough trade (Ron Kelly is brilliantly endearing here) to announce that they are married, while uptight son Lewis (Kevin Spink with a ramrod up his backside) disapproves of everything that’s going on, especially the behaviour of his neurotic mother (I’ve never seen the always-watchable Barbara Lowing so convincing), and when the Ron Kelly character begins an almost-successful seduction of Lewis’s wife (Francesca Savige at her flirtatious best), it’s all he can do to keep a stiff upper lip, which he has obviously inherited from his father (Daniel Murphy), who is dying of some incurable disease, a fact which he has kept from them all until this momentous dinner party.
Next scene, of course, is the death bed, where Daniel Murphy has changed from stern to crusty, especially when he is visited by a stranger who wants him to tell all about his life, his regrets and especially his happiest memories.
There are obvious parallels with Pinter’s own life and plays, but you don’t have to know anything about them. My companion, who is not a regular theatre-goer, was only vaguely familiar with the Pinter name, but she was transformed by these six startling performances from some of Brisbane’s best actors. Add to the mix four world-class playwrights and you have a production that deserves a far wider audience. And I forgot to mention Sean Dennis on sax, whose chilling music undercut and sustained it all. I hope some other venue picks up this production, because a mere three days as part of a festival fringe season is just not enough for writing and performances of this standard. Is anyone out there listening? Brisbane Powerhouse, perhaps?
Review - my night with harold - time off
Harold Pinter's imprint is alive and well in My Night With Harold. Four vignettes recounting very different stories incorporate Pinter's famous style as well as placing him in character in homage to his many facets – political ideologue, grumpy old man, dysfunctional patriarch. There's a medley of modern thoughts to kick off with, shaped as a war protest. This is the least accessible part and it's a good thing it was over with first. The remaining three acts are excellent. There's a two-hander interrogation of a traitor by a menacing spoke of the governing wheel – using the increasingly threatening Pinter-esque line, “I'm smiling – can you hear that?” – and an awkward dinner party resulting in a surprise marriage, exposing the cracks beneath familial lines. The last act portrays a dying man, visited by an aspiring writer ostensibly to comfort him, but delivers something much more subversive. My Night With Harold is directed by NIDA-trained Andrea Moor and the quality shows. It's heartening to hear such delicately crafted writing, and see actors who were finely tuned instruments of Pinter's conflicted spirit.
JESSICA MANSOUR
