Together, 3 Harold Pinter one-act plays fully explore being alone

Theater Review |

Loneliness can come in many forms — the lonely widow, the lonely crowd, the lone gunman. In his lengthy career, British playwright Harold Pinter has approached these faces of loneliness from many angles with his wry and absurdist pen. The Community Theatre and director John Abramson bring us together to examine some of these with a seamless production of Pinter's "Other Places," a three-play fugue on the things that keep us apart.

First, geography. "Family Voices" chronicles the exchanged letters of a forlorn mother and her distantly located son. As the mother's letters become more desperate and her son's more detached, we come to understand that the mail system is the least of obstacles between them.

Second, language. In "Victoria Station," the two characters (a taxicab driver and his dispatcher) speak the same language but make so little sense of each other's meaning that a simple transaction becomes a painful, existential struggle.

Finally, the unlikely disconnect of time. "A Kind of Alaska" (based on Oliver Sacks' book "Awakenings") presents a woman waking from a 21-year-long catatonic coma, to find that she cannot recognize the year or the people in it, including herself.

These are individuals shouting into an unseen chasm, overwhelmed by communication but desperate to communicate. Pinter, a master at co-mingling ambiguity with specificity, makes them outlandish enough that we can laugh, but precise enough that we can empathize. Abramson's cast embraces Pinter's contradictions exceedingly well, savoring both humor and agony, looking the audience directly in the eye while still inhabiting their separate world. As the mother and son in "Family Voices," Sara Rucker Thiessen and Bryan Thomas connect particularly well on all levels, as do Karl Keff and Randal Foss as the dispatcher and driver in "Victoria Station."

Abramson smartly contrasts all the loneliness and desperation by placing his audience practically in the lap of the performers, mostly forgoing the large stage in their performance space for folding chairs and a small patch of floor. The effect is an intimacy that flies in the face of the bitter content of the plays themselves, as if to suggest that the best defense for loneliness is to drudge through it together.

Leah B. Breen: leahb42@aol.com