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Clarence Tsui

Ashes to Ashes

Theatre du Pif

Fringe Club

Reviewed: April 28

Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes  opens with Rebecca's vivid recollection of an apparently sado-masochistic skirmish with a former lover.  Her present partner Devlin,  anxious and jealous, probes further.  Rebecca's story sinks deeper,  her streams of consciousness conjuring images that hint at mass murder and possibly the Holocaust.

As  Pinter plays go, Ashes to Ashes is cryptic fare. The setting and even the names are known only through programme notes.  Throughout the 50-minute play,  the  mentally unbalanced Rebecca  goes off on tangents, and the  pair  sporadically mutter to each other. The play demands total concentration - rewarded with only vague  interpretations.

Ashes to Ashes  is  Pinter's self-parody, with  his well-known themes: caged fury beneath  civilised veneers, obsession with memory, power struggles  amid  banal  everyday discourse.

Credit is due to Theatre du  Pif for tackling material  about  self-inflicted misery and claustrophobia,  after years  of more  uplifting,  breezy fare. Sean Curran and Bonni Chan Lai-chu exercise perfect timing - crucial  to Pinter's penchant for sporadic verbal ping-pong. Their stage presence also fills in the minimal backdrop of  two seats, two lamps and a coffee table.

However, the play - directed  by Lee Chun-chow -  is too understated, lacking the  menace that usually permeates Pinter's imagined worlds.

There was never a sign of  the protagonists' urbane  universe unravelling amid kind words. Curran could use  more expression to reflect Devlin's frustration at being excluded  and patronised. And there's   room for Chan to play up the sang-froid  as she taunts Devlin about his helplessness.

By the play's abrupt end -  with Rebecca's  tale about her baby being  taken away - Ashes should have presented  a meltdown.  But the world hasn't perished: only another layer of dust has  settled on the pair's musty existence.



Ashes to Ashes