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By David Middleman
Two of Harold Pinter's rarely staged one-act gems are being offered up this August at The Studio. As this year's entrant in The Studio's Great Playwright Series, Strangers in the Bedroom explores vastly different aspects of the relationship of wife to husband, and of man to woman. The two plays come close to spanning Pinter's career, as THE LOVER was written in 1963 and ASHES TO ASHES in 1996.
 In THE LOVER, Pinter puts his prickling sense of the absurd to excellent use exploring the fecundity of adultery. Sarah and Richard have an excellent arrangement: She has her lover, he has his whore. At second glance, though, all is not as it appears. Often disturbing, frequently hilarious, THE LOVER sets the whole notion of marital relations on its head, entertaining us all the while. This is, after all, the genius of Pinter.
In ASHES TO ASHES, Pinter masterfully conflates reality with the - what? The possible? The might have been? Can we tell which is which? Can Rebecca tell the difference as she sometimes reluctantly, sometimes boldly, answers questions about a past lover? Can life be this grotesquely bittersweet? And what of Devlin? Does his story, his reality, depend upon hers?
 I picked these particular plays to stage together because on the surface they're both two-character plays that ostensibly deal with “Something about a Marriage.” Yet they were written over 30 years apart and, as you might expect, they are two completely different animals: Different approaches, different foci, just plain different. Together they demonstrate an amazing range in one writer's mind. So you have a sort of yin/yang thematic thing going on, with the centers of control ebbing and flowing and mixing it up. And, of course, Pinter's really good. He has the uncanny ability to take us by the hand and lead us into a normal lifelike scene...and slowly, imperceptibly, introduce us to a world that progresses from just slightly skewed to very skewed - a world different enough from our own that it shows us very important things about what we perceive our world to be. And he laughs with us as he walks beside us: A fearless, uncompromising guide.
 Pinter was an actor, writer, director, producer, novelist, poet and essayist. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. He wrote some 29 stage plays and garnered numerous Tony AwardŽ nominations. He also wrote and racked up nominations for screenplays such as The French Lieutenant's Woman, Betrayal, The Quiller Memorandum and the 2007 film Sleuth, also appearing in the film alongside Michael Caine and Jude Law. One of his most memorable film and stage appearances was as Krapp in Beckett's KRAPP’S LAST TAPE two years before his death in 2008.
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Strangers in the Bedroom opens at The Studio on Friday, August 20 and continues through Saturday, September 4. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Fridays & Saturdays and 2:00 p.m. on Sundays.
For tickets, call 602-765-0120 or get them online HERE. **Please note that online ticketing ends three hours prior to each performance. For tickets close to show time, please call 602-765-0120 or inquire at the door.**
To learn even more about Harold Pinter, join us for “Pinter: A Perspective” on Thursday, August 19, or Thursday, August 26, at 7:30 p.m. These complimentary evenings include an introduction on Harold Pinter, stage readings of scenes from some of his works and a moderated audience discussion by Dr. Barbara Acker of ASU.
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