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POETRYso familiar they make the audience flinch.The repressive urbanity of the set of starchamber inquisitions in living rooms is sostark because commonplaces and civilitiesare wielded like whips.Jenny Kemp's production is terrific, fullof pace and portent. Again, the dropping ofany pretence at English accents (as with thedisavowal of stage American in the O'Neill)liberates the actors so they can stick, withmusicianly precision, to the rhythms ofPinter's pattering dialogue. There can havebeen few dramatists in any age soexperimental and 'original' who had at thesam e time such a massive naturalistic gift,such a microphone of an ear.The sweet scarifying nothings of Pinterproved adaptable to the cinematic masterpiecesof Losey and the laconic eloquenceof a range of film-makers. In The Collectionhe is served splendidly by his quartet ofactors. Robert Menzies, Bruce Myles, DavidTredinnick and Melita Jurisic have anensemble strength and sense of actuallyhitting the note (not swerving around it)which is rare in Australian theatre.Menzies in particular has a sharp, hecticquality which is in no way separate fromthis actor's classical strength. He can hearthe pauses in Pinter the way the Shakespeareanhears the rise and fall of the line.But each of the actors gets the necessaryknife-edge restraint to allow Pinter, thatpoet of intimidation, to sound like himself.Bruce Myles is as nasty and insinuatingas Donald Pleasance in the role of the olderart dealer in The Collection, and he directsThe Lover, which is rather more of a scherzo,though a masterly one, with considerableskill.The Lover is almost a two-bander-likeNoel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence inone of the subtler chambers of hell.Again Menzies' acting has a hecticbrilliance and precision. At times MelitaJurisic seem ed to me to be overplaying theJean Greenwood-like voice of deep honeyshe assum es for this role, but physically sheis marvellous, fiery and then disarrayed,torn, distracted.One had the strange illusion with thisPinter duo that these plays were beingperformed as they were written. It is anillusion, of course. Any achievem ent of thetheatre will be a victory of interpretation,but it was nice to see it working so tacitlyand implicitly without show or swank.I suspect what Australian theatre needsat the moment like a shot in the arm ismore of this naturalism and this-for wantof a better word-classicism. It does notTadpoles'One is very stillit may be shyor perhapsit's missing its mother.'he says peering into the bucket.We are digging a pondbeside the young fig treefrogs are what we want.What I've gotcannot be describedbut when I look at himmy heart'sa bucket full of tadpoles.need pseudo-boulevardier hacks falling ontheir bottoms pretending to be Trevor Nunn.It needs chamber style productions, perhapsespecially of the classic modern works or inthe classic modern style. Paradoxically thiswill be, if only as a whisper and a traceelement, a national style. What else wouldit be?If the Bell Shakespeare Company wouldlearn to do Shakespeare with the restraintKATE L LEWELLYNNorfolk Island PineThe pine tree standsa chalice full of sky.Beyond,the sea is also blueand is what the land sipsevery day.Birds are singingin the Tree of Heaven*which holds the feederfull of seed.The lawn is a green clothon this earth.All I need to dois prayto be a glass of poetry.*Ailanthus altissima. Also called Marryattville Tree.and intensity that they have done O'Neill;if the MTC could get on to its main stagethe feeling for words and fundamentaldramatic solutions- rather than extrinsichyperbole and declaration-that it showedin Pinter ... well, then we might have amainstream theatre worth spitting at. •Peter Craven is currently editing BestAustralian Essays 1999.VOLUME 9 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 45