6th@Penn's pair of Pinter plays potent
 

By Anne Marie Welsh THEATER CRITIC

March 2, 2004

What a delectable pairing, "Ashes to Ashes" and "The Lover," two one-acts by Harold Pinter, now in a beautifully acted program at 6th@Penn Theatre. Both plays are cat-and-mouse games between married couples, their spare, potent dialogue reflecting the dark and the light sides of the English playwright.

Ron Choularton and Cristina Soria, two of the city's best actors, create subtle tone poems from the elliptical speeches for their enigmatic characters: You won't know exactly what's happening between the husband and wife in either play, but you'll feel the menace grow and the tension pass between them.

Choularton embodies the contrasting men as borderline, potentially violent creeps; the gorgeous Soria plays the two women malleable and close to unhinged.

Robert May, a relative newcomer to San Diego, directed these two-handers. This is the third of his productions to cross my path; here as in the other two (a hip new comedy on the Fritz Blitz; a metatheatrical romp at 6th@Penn), May's casting, pacing and command of tone are exceptional.

"Ashes to Ashes" (1996) opens with a police siren, a sound that Rebecca (Soria) enjoys hearing. She sits nervously in an armchair, legs tucked beneath her; similarly situated is Devlin (Choularton), a tweedy sort in eyeglasses and casual sweater, a scotch in his hand.

At first he's a foil, listening intently as she describes a former lover who forced her to kiss his fist. Their mundane marital bickering intersects with her frightening memories of wartime atrocities. While she stood on a railroad platform, for instance, that former lover tore babies from the arms of screaming mothers.

She remembers looking out the window in Dorset at a crowd of people being forced to walk across the beach, suitcases in hand, into the sea. But from mass murder she segues into a reported visit to her sister and the kids, an afternoon of tea and moviegoing and laughter.

As the brutality accumulates, and Choularton's Devlin becomes more ominous, a kind of violent bully, Rebecca's memories become more distinct and personal. Soria's emotional concentration here is riveting. Fear, anger and guilt mingle. In the storefront space at 6th@Penn, with patrons just a few feet from her suffering, the ending carries an intense emotional charge.

Soria's Rebecca stands in for all survivors who try to integrate the genocidal horrors of 20th-century wars into their psyches. "Nothing has ever happened to me," she insists, before breaking down. "Nothing has ever happened to any of my friends." Or has it?

In "The Lover" (1962), which Choularton first acted in 10 years ago at the Fritz, the dynamics shift. Richard, the spiffy accountant husband, queries the arch Sarah about her lover. Gradually this pair, descendants of Noel Coward's sparring lovers, reveal their secret sexual lives and let us in on the erotic games and role playing that parallel Pinter's own theatrical gamesmanship.

May and the actors blithely lead us down a path to the moment when this comedy of manners turns almost deadly before equilibrium returns. Choularton smoothly (and often hilariously) segues in and out of the personas Richard role-plays, while Soria's Sarah devolves from elegant, admired wife to movie star and high-class whore. Sarah tells Richard that her lover's fascination with her husband makes the illicit sex "all the more piquant."

Their relationship becomes a hall of mirrors. The billions to be spent on the healthy marriage initiative couldn't "save" this match, in which sexuality and personal identity are permanently, comically divorced.

Playwright: Harold Pinter. Director: Robert May. Lighting: Karen Filijan. Cast: Ron Choularton and Cristina Soria.

Anne Marie Welsh: (619) 293-1265; fax (619) 260-5082; anne-marie.welsh@uniontrib.com.