Pinter at the Pinter

Saw tonight's "happy birthday, harold" gala and absolutely loved it.

For the first half, the ensemble of actors all sat in chairs on stage, looking toward the audience, with the readings/performances taking place in front of them, at the front of the stage where the mics were. In the second half, the ensemble were placed stage right, looking at the readers/actors in the centre.

Here are some of my highlights of the evening, with the best saved for last:-

I enjoyed snippets of Pinter's real life activism:

Jon Snow broke his impartial newsreader persona to read Pinter's raging Commons protest speech against the war in Iraq;

Tamsin Greig read Pinter's love letter to Arthur Miller, detailing their joint visit to the US embassy in Ankara to protest the US involvement with Turkey's human rights abuses. Pinter was tickled pink that Miller walked out of the event in protest with him, and Greig gave this her usual witty wry reading.

I enjoyed Hayley Squires performing "request stop," in which her xenophobic and anti-social rants about supposedly unhelpful advice about the Shepherds Bush bus felt very now;

I enjoyed John Simm reenacting his sneering malevolent Lenny from Jamie Lloyd's previous production of "The Homecoming" opposite former castmates, Keith Allen and Ron Cook. I loved Indira Varma assuming Gemma Chan's role to enact the (Basic Instinct-Sharon Stone style) leg crossing and uncrossing scene, while 5 men drooled. Varma has always excelled with sexual power games on stage, and no less here.

I enjoyed Kristin Scott Thomas performing an excerpt from Pinter's "French Lieutenant's Woman" script, while original film cast member, Jeremy Irons, looked on from the wings.

I enjoyed Samuel West's casually decadent reading of Pinter's "Old Days" poem, in which he relishes the good old days of stabbing "lefties" to death.

I LOVED Felicity Kendal's reading of Pinter's poem "Message," in which the middle class doyenne advised her son in a letter to "kick the first blind man you see in the balls!"

I also LOVED the reunion of three key "The Hothouse" performers, in which Simon Russell Beale's haplessly sadistic and paranoid Roote hilariously forcefed cake to John Heffernan while a malevolent (again) John Simm lurked mere inches behind him.

I Loved Tom Edden's finicky pernickety aggressive insistence that pain only travels downwards in the body, from neck ache to the nether regions, but NOT upwards to the brain, in Pinter's perfect "That's your Trouble" sketch.

I LOVED Tom Hiddleston's eerie expressive calmness as Robert in Pinter's "Betrayal," carefully carving his stony words like a sculptor, taking on board Zawe Ashton's Emma's infidelity to him. Former Emma, Kristen Scott Thomas watched from the wings.

I ABSOLUTELY ADORED Jeremy Irons taking on the younger man's role of Briggs in "No Man's Land." His added age gave the Brigg's character's laugh-out-loud speech about the impossibility of finding Bolsover Street a lived-in jadedness that made the speech even funnier, especially coming from an actor so prone to seriousness. The contrast made his circuitous directions about finding a place, from which there is no escape, one of the wonders of the evening.

And I equally ABSOLUTELY ADORED Lee Evans persecuting long-suffering Tom Edden (great again) in Pinter's wondrously comic early sketch, "Trouble in the Works," in which Evans may have forgot his lines, but stand-up that he is, he got extra laughs for it from the audience, and it conveniently served to make Edden and his character suffer even more from Evans hilarious perverse obdurate line readings.

For me, an unforgettable 5 star evening.