"a slight ache"
by harold pinter
Flora ............................... Clare Higgins
Edward .......................,,... Simon Russell Beale
Matchseller ...............,,,,.... Jamie Beamish
Director ........................... Iqbal Khan
at Lyttleton, National Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/pinterdouble
Flora: Have you noticed the honeysuckle this morning?
Edward: The what?
Flora: The honeysuckle.
Edward: Honeysuckle? Where?
A Slight Ache takes an oblique view of a long-married couple, the irascible Edward and his frustrated wife Flora, when the arrival of a statuesque silent stranger splinters their loveless bourgeois marriage. Simon Russell Beale and Clare Higgins play the couple in this early work by Harold Pinter.
this was farily pedestrian experience for me
simon russell beale and clare higgins are always easy and enjoyable to watch
and the play has some fun observations about the surreal sterility of middleclass middleaged married life conversation in its early scenes.
but after the entrance of the matchseller it all just felt too obvious and i wasn't held by either any real sense of caring about what was happening to these people - the husband meeting his own breakdown / death; his wife welcoming 'death' in as the better replacement that she could coddle and control - nor sense of much surprise. perhaps the play has dated but its lack for me was any real push or drive to it - i needed some more ominous pulsation of creeping decay if not coming doom.
m + c + s all enjoyed it more than me tho i think
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