Two characters await an improbable arrival. Meanwhile, they discuss their lives, in odd sentences that make an awful kind of sense. But it’s not Godot they hope for. Andy is dying, as his wife Bel looks on, and their sons should be here to say goodbye. No wonder his language is foul: his daughter is a ghost, his sons ‘sponging, parasitic ponces’ and he’s a cheat and a loudmouth – just ask his wife. Could there be a more rancid and disappointed death?
In this short, pungent 1993 play, written after his mother’s demise, Harold Pinter forces the big topics – loss, disillusion, mortality – into fantastical shapes. There’s a joy in his radical use of language that seems utterly at odds with the miseries he’s communicating.
As Andy, David Bradley growls at his embroidering wife; Deborah Findlay’s responses are about as soft as her needle. Across the stage, the offspring play odd word games, their language as disconnected from their tawdry reality as they are from the folks back home. Their sister haunts the stage, and other ghosts wander in.
Only Lisa Diveney as the phantom daughter, Bridget, fails satisfactorily to negotiate Pinter’s complex and demanding dialogue. Which is a pity, as she starts and ends the play.
The others, particularly Bradley, respond to the playwright’s verbal juggling with delight, and director Bijan Sheibani gives them space to throw the balls high. They are talking, mostly, about talking: the impossibility of communicating is beautifully conveyed. From beyond his own grave, Pinter offers us a mirror in which we cannot recognise ourselves, and makes it impossible not to admire the view.