Theatre in Review: Being Harold Pinter (Belarus Free Theatre/Ellen Stewart Theatre at La Mama)

	Joan Marcus

It's one thing to feel the bone-penetrating chill of Harold Pinter's later political plays in any normal production; it's another thing altogether when you know that the cast members have experienced firsthand the terrors depicted on stage. That's the unique experience now being offered in Being Harold Pinter, which unlocks new levels of horror in works that were already remarkable for their pitiless assessment of the soul-destroying ways of totalitarianism. As citizens of the last Stalinist state in Europe -- it is ruled by the notorious strongman Aleksandr G. Lukashenko -- the members of Belarus Free Theatre know whereof they speak.

Belarus Free Theatre was founded in 2005 by Natalia Koliada and her husband, Nikolai Khalezin. He was a former art gallery proprietor and journalist; she was a political activist with a particular interest in the dangers of nuclear missiles and other weaponry left over from the Soviet era. Because of their reputations as dissidents, they developed a kind of samizdat theatre, performing in small rooms to audiences invited via text message. As international artists and institutions -- including Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and the Public Theatre - began to take notice, the members of the troupe ran afoul of the local KGB. (Yes, it is still called that in Belarus.) They now live in exile, performing where and when they can, working to expose Lukashenko's crimes to the world, and urging governments to impose powerful sanctions on his regime.

Such efforts make them heroes worthy of our applause and support; it's almost improbable that they -- and the members of their troupe - would be talented theatre artists as well. But you need only see a few minutes of Being Harold Pinter to see that this is so. Using Pinter's Nobel Prize speech as a kind of spine, the adaptor/director, Vladimir Shcherban, has elegantly assembled a series of excerpts from Pinter's plays, tracing his progression from aesthetic provocateur to committed foe of police states everywhere. By adding in actual testimony from their fellow citizens who have suffered at the hands of the state security apparatus, one quickly realizes that even the most seemingly surreal passages of Pinter's plays are informed by a documentary-like authenticity.

The production -- a co-venutre of the Public Theatre and La Mama --begins on a blackly comic note, with one performer having his face spray-painted with blood and one eye taped over. We quickly learn from the text that Pinter had a bad fall on the day he won the Nobel, an accident that left "a trench of blood" across his forehead. Thus marked, he becomes our guide through his works as they evolve more and more in the direction of the political.

I'm not a big fan of theatre in translation, in which the actors perform in their native language and we get the words in English over a headset, or, as is the case here, in surtitles. But what otherwise might be a distracting experience quickly becomes a riveting one thanks to the company's mastery of what you might call Pinterian technique. Even with the cast speaking Russian and the words in English projected on the upstage wall, excerpts from The Homecoming and Old Times crackle with tension and malice. Clearly, these actors are conversant with the menace that lurks under the surface of his enigmatic sentences.

Although it postdates many of his political plays, Ashes to Ashes -- with its intimations of brutal spousal abuse that take on larger implications -- is here seen as a kind of transitional work that segues into scenes from the likes of Mountain Language and One for the Road, with their stark depiction of the techniques of state-sponsored terror. (Sadly, we are reminded, the US is not free of guilt, as episodes such as Abu Ghraib demonstrate.) Arguably, the most horrifying part is the passage from Mountain Language, in which members of a community are tortured to keep from speaking in their native tongue. Brought to the breaking point, they are cheerfully informed that the regime has changed its mind, and their language is once again legal -- for now. The characters have their freedoms handed back to them -- but their ability to choose freedom is destroyed forever. By the time we get actual testimony from citizens of Belarus detailing their experiences at the hands of the KGB, the line between art and reality has become almost totally blurred.

There are no design credits for Being Harold Pinter, but the presentation is simple and elegant nonetheless. The black stage deck is outlined in white and there are four chairs. A pair of screens on the upstage wall shows us Pinter's eyes in close-up. The screens above show the translated text. And yet, like everything else in Being Harold Pinter, the lack of adornment is the key to the show's impact.

I have seen few pieces of theatre in the last several years that speak to our unhappy age as eloquently as Being Harold Pinter. By combining a great writer's simple, brutal, eloquent words with the deeply felt, fully lived experiences of real prisoners of conscience, the members of Belarus Free Theatre have cast a searching light on one of the great evils of this and the last century -- the attempt to erase the individual for political ends. No other production in town grips you in quite the same way.--David Barbour