The Lover and The Collection

LOVER NEST Black and Grimm canoodle.

Photo: Jodi Gottberg

Immersion in back-to-back Pinter is a destabilizing theatrical experience: His precise, mannered language hints at coded meaning, and motives are revealed teasingly—or not at all.

In The Lover, a man (a wolfish Grimm) and his wife (Black) blithely discuss each others’ philandering. He leaves, only to swagger in minutes later in the role of his wife’s swain. But what happens when a lover rewrites the rules of a fantasy? The varied geometries of seduction are used to great comic effect, and in Black’s throaty Jessica Rabbit voice, even moments of slapstick have a sensual gravitas. As the couple cycle through scenery-chewing renditions of sexual role play, it’s impossible to know where fantasy ends and abuse begins, or whose pleasure is being tended to.

The Collection features a cuckolded man (Reed) who trails his wife’s one-night stand (Francisco) to the house the latter shares with his older lover, demanding unspecified satisfaction. Reed’s hangdog blandness conveys subtextual menace wonderfully. But Francisco’s bluff delivery obscures his character’s slippery nature, leaving Grimm, his housemate and keeper, to provide context.

Though falling short of sustained tension, the performers ably handle the pieces’ broader notes of violence and ambiguity. In both acts, Pinter puts people in a jar and shakes it, eliciting reactions infinitely more complex than the situation would imply.

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