Heart Play

. . . while away saw The Dumb Waiter/The Zoo Story Pinter/Albee by soulpepper . . . found that the performance of Albee reached deeper than the Pinter . . . most review(s) concur . . . wanted to see a respected canadian theater company approach Pinter especially having seen and worked with Henry Woolf and Susan Williamson a team of Pinter colleagues and performers extraordinaire . . . Pinter demands a sharp, ironic, dark, comic sensibility and a naive yet alienated impulse . . . Albee is far more straightforward - north american actors, directors and audiences seem to respond to the simple allegory and tragedy . . . power in directness . . . power through the indirect . . . it could have been a revealing twin bill but this would have required each piece to be shaped as parts of a whole rather than just two distinct acts . . . the possibility existed as the same two actors shared the roles . . . the two directors needed to collaborate more . . . it is in the courage to forcefully strike these two brilliantly wrought pieces together that the sparks of fire would excite or crumble in our hands . . . soulpepper had the idea but lacked the vision . . .