ADAPTED BY KERRY LEE CRABBE
FROM THE NOVEL BY HAROLD PINTER
At the White Bear Theatre.
The Dwarfs is a semi autobiographical novel about four very close friends – young people adjusting to a world of work. In the years after the second World WAr…
An utterly charming and loveable eccentric is played by remarkably versatile actor Ossian Perret well known for his appearances on film and TV. .He is introduced to us at the very beginning of the play. It is a wonderfully accurate and very funny performance producing gales of laughter from the audience. One is almost convinced this is going to be a comedy. Len wears glasses and it is not until he takes them off that he can actually see things.The others treat him with a kind of amused condescension, althoug they all want him to be their best friend.,
Charlie MacGechan,one of the producers of the Flying Colours company is Mark, a jobbing actor with pretentious ideas about his attractiveness to women. He quoted the “I want them down on their knees and calling me sir” an expression I have heard before by another jobbing actor who eventually became famous.
The third young man is Pete (Joseph Potter) Carefully coiffeured and suited, full of sophisticated charm, but we find out that he is in fact mentally disturbed with suicidal tendencies and uncontrollable bouts of anger and violence.
Virginia (Denise Laniyan} is gorgeous and sexy and is the catalyst for most of what happens in the play. She is Pete’s girlfriend but he is a strange kind of lover and bursts into a violent rage, when she mentions “Hamlet” He thinks she has no right to talk about things she obviously knows nothing about. There are a couple of violent scenes, one of which is played in front of his friends. He tries to do anything he can to bring her down. What makes it even more effective is that at the White Bear the audience is so close, almost on top of the stage. We are in Pete’s unhappy violent life. Virginia is cool and composed through everything, even in the way she says goodbye to the relationship.
The dialogue of the play is very much Pinteresque in style. A kind of heightened everyday speech that creates the feeling of real life and it is wonderfully performed by the actors.
Len, who can only see when he takes off his glasses. Mark the hopeful actor sleepy and often bored. They are most probably phases of Pinter’s young life.. Probably the different phases of PIntes own life. Three characters about himself. Accurate and fascinating. I was interested in the jealousy they all displayed over each other’s attachment to Len.
How wonderful it is to find a PInter written in his young days when his talent was burgeoning and brilliant. Kerry Lee Crabbe was responsible for this clever adaptation and the director is Harry Burton who has brought out the energy of the characters. The fifties music adds to the period feeling, as does the fact that the men wear suits and proper leather shoes.Costume design by Isabella van Braekel who has also designed the set. – a seedy room in Notting Hill Gate. before it got posh.
The Play is produced by Flying Colours.
Aline Waites
pyekan 