Playwright: Harold Pinter. At: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St. Tickets: 773-335-1650;
www.steppenwolf.org; $20-$78. Runs through: April 28
Our locale is a modest seaside B&B, owned by the elderly Meg and Petey. Their sole guest is Stan, a reclusive thirtysomething bachelor whom Meg coddles with maternal affection. A pair of strangers arrive: the suave Goldberg and the surly McCann. Their intrusion unnerves Stan, his distress escalating under their bullying. Meanwhile, since today is Stan's birthday, his hostess and the neighbor girl prepare to give him a party. In the course of the celebration, Stan goes completely off the rails and is taken away in the morning by his mysterious pursuers.
What actors and directors love about the plays of the late Harold Pinter is that almost any subtext can be imposed on their enigmatic scenarios and dialogue, as long as a mood of nemesis-fueled menace is generated, ultimately leading to the subjugation of the protagonist(s). For this production, Austin Pendleton chooses an interpretation in Beckett mode, its milieu an existential void, visually represented by an open-sided stage furnished with nothing but a dining table and chairs for the characters to scramble around, over and under.
The rationale for this spartan decor and borderless scenic configuration, according to designer Walt Spangler, is the reduction of distance between viewers and performersa concept easily realized in a small storefront where the close proximity of spectators makes for suitably claustrophobic tension, but futile in an auditorium the size of a skating rink (How do you corner a fugitive in a room with no walls?)mandating long, slow, fully visible but dramatically inert entrances and exits. Increasing the proportion of static emptiness in the two-and-a-half-hour running time is the players' propensity for extending Pinter's idiosyncratic ellipses (with the exception of John Mahoney's Petey, whose natural speech we sorely miss whenever he is absent). Pendleton's intent may have been to highlight the contrast of silence with the occasional bursts of loquacity, but this affectation only further dilutes the tension.
So, are Goldberg and McCann repo agents for the Grim Reaper? Is the "van" they drive, in fact, a hearse? Has Stan lost his will to live, and is "birthday" to be understood as a euphemism for death? Is Goldberg's frantic denial of his own geriatric symptoms an attempt to ensure his continuance among the living? Is Pinter mocking English government-sponsored healthcare? When our universe resembles a studio-workshop exercise exhibiting no discernible urgency, why should we care?
See Critics' Picks and Spotlight on page 25.