14th March 2007

REVIEW - Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter - presented by thinktanktheatre at The Methvens Studio, Worthing - West Sussex Gazette - 14th March 2007

'The play opens with a shadow of a man projected on to the back wall. On stage is Devlin, a shadow of a man and of a husband. Throughout Ashes to Ashes the audience witnesses the breakdown of his marriage to Rebecca. She sits upright in a soft-looking chair on a stage lit like a study. It’s warm and homely yet bright enough for the scene of interrogation that follows. Forty minutes later, I awoke from a trance, seemingly hypnotised in the same way as Rebecca. I have been transported by her emotive stories to places and times that neither she nor I have ever visited. I have watched their confrontation like a voyeur as their discussion flits between the ordinary and the atrocious. I too have experienced the characteristics of each that provokes frustration in the other: Devlin’s powerlessness, his seeming lack of passion, his repetition; Rebecca’s inability to answer a question, her fantasticalness. There is no shouting or screaming but a silent violence, more powerful, stifling and intense than any action could have been. Ashes to Ashes was surely written for such a small theatre space. The audience can see every facial twitch, every slight adjustment of clothing, it can hear every breath. If Saul Ware and Jane Huxley made the slightest mistake or fell out of character for a moment, we would see. But they didn’t. Up there on the stage, slightly set apart, they entered their characters so fully and powerfully, I forgot I was watching a play.'

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