Pinter Three appeals to opposite poles of the play-going spectrum. The birdbrains like me will enjoy the music-hall sketches while the goatee-strokers will have fun pretending that Pinter’s deadly earnest memory plays are worth seeing. Watching the first piece, Landscape, is like receiving a jigsaw puzzle in instalments. Two characters, Duff and Beth, speak to us without acknowledging each other. Maybe they’re married. Maybe they aren’t. Duff, played by Keith Allen, is a barking, aggressive know-all who works as a chauffeur. Tamsin Greig’s Beth is a prattling Irish scullery maid who witters on about ‘having a baby’ with a lover who may be Duff, or an unseen chap named Sykes, or someone else. Without that unsolved puzzle, the script is just a long sliver of garrulous reminiscence located in the days when a pint of beer cost two shillings and threepence (12¼p).
A Kind of Alaska places the same actors in another fatuous brainteaser. Allen plays Dr Hornby whose amnesiac patient Debbie (Greig) accuses him of sexual molestation. Doc Hornby responds to her allegations with a careless Jimmy Savile shrug. Debbie indulges in 15 minutes of fragmented jabber whereupon the nonchalant medic announces: ‘You’ve been asleep for 29 years.’ A pity he didn’t mention that earlier. Enter Debbie’s sister Pauline (Meera Syal), whom she hasn’t seen since childhood. Debbie is surprised by her sister’s breasts and she coyly asks if Pauline is their middle-aged aunt. This is funny, sort of, but Debbie’s roly-poly chitchat is maddening to sit through because she doesn’t know who she is. As always, Pinter lacks a strong finish.
The sketches are better. Girls is a crazed rant played at 100 mph by the amazing Tom Edden. He plays a hyperventilating academic who’s fixated by a female student whom he overheard mentioning that girls like to be spanked.
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