PINTER ON NANTUCKET
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
Harold Pinter is one of those 20th century theater gods - a playwright who was able to draw pictures with the postmodern angst and cultural upheaval of the 20th century, and share them without any competition from things like the Internet or extended cable. He was a theater god when it was still possible to be such a thing - when someone like Arthur Miller could still land someone like Marilyn Monroe. Pinter wrote and staged dozens of pieces. So whenever anyone stages a selection of Harold Pinter, it's worth knowing why they chose what they chose.

Cheryl Fudge, left, and Bernadette Feeney in "A Kind of Alaska." Feeney plays a woman waking up after 29 years of Enchephalitis lethargica. Fudge plays her supportive, long-suffering sister. ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

Barely a newly elected TWN board member, actor Ciaran Byrne said he'd wanted to stage a performance of "The Dumb Waiter" since reading the piece in his first acting class. Last year, Byrne was aware that Pinter had just won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature and that "The Dumb Waiter" was about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. So when a gap in the TWN's winter schedule emerged, Byrne suggested that TWN stage a performance of "The Dumb Waiter" along with another of Pinter's oneacts, "A Kind of Alaska."

Written in 1957, "The Dumb Waiter" focuses on two hitmen, one older (Ben) and one younger (Gus). They are thrown together in a basement by the powers that-be to await the orders on their hit. Chris Witte plays Ben, and Byrne fills Gus' shoes.

"Pinter slipped out of his own style to write 'A Kind of Alaska,' and that's what intrigued me," said Byrne of the one-act he chose to compliment "The Dumb Waiter." Pinter based "A Kind of Alaska" on the case studies of Oliver Sacks. Written in 1982, it is the only one of Pinter's works that credits any source other than his own imagination - making it something of an anomaly. "It's Pinter, but it's not," Byrne said.

The story follows a woman suffering from Encephalitis lethargica, who wakes to find that she has only retained memories of her childhood, and that her sister and her sister's husband have been taking care of her for three decades. It is, at its core, the story about transitioning from one state of consciousness to the next. Dame Judi Dench once played the role of Deborah, the 40something woman who, upon waking, believes herself to be a 16 year old.

Pairing off the ephemeral "A Kind of Alaska" with the darkly comic "The Dumb Waiter" creates a kind of mix of feminine and masculine images - a marriage of bride and groom, respectively. Feeney is even staging "A Kind of Alaska" in white, and "The Dumb Waiter" in tones of black, per convention.

Interestingly, director Michael Feeney experienced memory loss himself recently. A serious slipand fall while striking the set of "The Graduate" gave Feeney a helicopter ride to Boston. Weeks later, he was shopping in the grocery store when he lost the full knowledge of "who I was and where I was." Feeney managed to make it home to his wife, Bernadette, who plays the disoriented Deborah in "A Kind of Alaska." He said he wasn't thinking about the experience consciously during the directing, but that it may have helped him to connect better with story.

"I got home, and I just said, 'I'm lost,'" remembered Feeney, who acted in "The Dumb Waiter" here 15 years ago and called Pinter "intense."

Feeney is also directing Cheryl Fudge and the always astute Frank Morral in the roles of Deborah's sister and doctor/brother-in-law, respectively.

"Admittedly, Pinter isn't everyone's cup of tea," Feeney said. "It will be interesting to see people's reactions to Pinter and his dark comedy, in the middle of winter.

But Pinter is also the kind of playwright who considers the actors part of his audience; actors take on a Pinter play the way surfers take on monster waves.

"It's not easy to do Pinter. . . . He tends to write characters that talk at each other, and not to each other," Byrne said. "It's a challenge to do Pinter, as

well as every actor's dream." I
When: March 28 - April 14; Wed. - Sat., 8 p.m.;
  Sundady matinee on April 1, 2 p.m.
Where: United Methodist Church (upstairs)
Cost: $15
For more information, please call 228-4305.
  PINTER             NANTUCKET
                            ON