SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Connecticut
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
Writing for Us
A CurtainUp 
London Review
London ReviewMoonlight
|
Love is an attribute no civil servant worth his salt would give house room to.
— Andy
|
Rear Deborah Findlay as Bel and David Bradley as Andy (Photo: Johan Persson) |
Moonlight is a minor Pinter play written in 1992 with extensive writer's block after a break of almost 15 years from playwriting and his last full length play. Although it is only 75 minutes long. Moonlight gets a star cast here at the Donmar under the talented young director Bijan Sheibani. So undoubtedly there is amazing talent from performers and director, but the Pinter vehicle seems inadequate with its overly lush, listings of adjectives as Pinter plays with language and repeats some of the Pinteresque word routines from his earlier plays. The title has to be ironic as this play is full of isolation and malice, not the soft glow we associate with the moon.
We are told in the programme notes by Pinter's second wife the author Lady Antonia Fraser that Moonlight is principally about the death of Pinter's mother aged 88 in October 1992. In the play we are asked to believe that Andy (David Bradley) has been a top civil servant who is now confines to his death bed and whose sons refuse to visit him. This surely must hark back to Pinter's split from his son Daniel who changed his name after Pinter left his first wife and Daniel's mother, the luminescent actress Vivien Merchant. She drank herself to death, never recovering from the abandonment of her serially unfaithful husband whom she had forgiven so often.
In Moonlight Deborah Findlay plays the irascible Andy's wife Bel, who sits embroidering at his bedside, a model of passive aggression as she recalls her own relationship with Andy's mistress Maria (Carol Royle). It is also the death of someone without the succour of religion or the warmth and companionship of family and friendship. Andy says "When they look at me they know that I am all that is left of my life." Lisa Diveney plays the ghost child, Bridget the lost daughter who haunts her father's room. Daniel Mays and Liam Garrigan are Jake and Fred the sons who occupy themselves with word games. Liam reflects his father, bed bound, but apathetic and not with clean sheets and a tidy bedroom. Daniel Mays, an actor with heaps of potential is limited by the absurdist writing.
I liked Bijan Sheibani's initial meta-theatrical staging, all the characters lined up at the beginning, standing, before they take their stage places, two into bed and one sitting at the foot of the bed, Bel in a chair and Jake slumped over a table as if to remind us that they are players. Bunny Christie's set allows all scenes to played on the same level with the main family onstage together. There is eerie sinister music, almost musique concrete.
Moonlight is depressing and uninventive with sections of it feeling like merely filler verbiage.
|
Subscribe to our FREE email updates with a note from editor Elyse Sommer about additions to the website -- with main page hot links to the latest features posted at our numerous locations. To subscribe,
E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com
put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message -- if you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country. |
| Moonlight
Written by Harold Pinter Directed by Bijan Sheibani Starring: David Bradley, Deborah Findlay, Daniel Mays With: Lisa Diveney, Liam Garrigan, Carol Royle, Paul Shelley Designed by Bunny Christie Lighting: Jon Clark Composer and Sound: Dan Jones Running time: One hour 15 minutes without an interval Box Office: 0844 871 7624 Booking to 28th May 2011 Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 13th April 2011 performance at The Donmar Warehouse, Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LX (Tube: Covent Garden) |
|
REVIEW FEEDBACK Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V): Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email . . . also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review. |
