“Is your lover coming today?” a man asks his wife. And so begins the bizarre psycho-drama The Lover, being presented at The Theatre on King (TTOK) in downtown Peterborough until Saturday, June 17th.
Directed by Kate Story and featuring Naomi DuVall and Chris Culgin, The Lover is a show about head games and fantasies, and a dangerous sexual power play that entraps two people in an endless loop of dissatisfaction.
Written in 1962 by British writer Harold Pinter, The Lover explores the demise of relationships in post-1950s society as social and sexual attitudes are rapidly changing. The one-act play presents a couple who are bored with one another and openly seek out other outlets for sexual fulfillment.
Richard (Chris Culgin) goes to work daily knowing that his wife Sarah (Naomi DuVall) will be receiving a visit from her lover at 3 p.m. Seemingly upset by the visits from this unknown man, Richard accepts them as a fact of life. However, he turns the game around when he announces to Sarah he has also taken on a lover of his own, who he calls “a whore.”
The husband, the wife, the lover, and the whore become four players who walk a thin line between fantasy and reality. That line begins to corrode as the rules change, and a struggle between Richard and Sarah for emotional domination throws their already crumbling marriage into a dangerous game where there are not any clearly defined winners.
The Lover is an excruciatingly uncomfortable production with a strange and often silent rhythm that seems to suck the air out of the room. It’s a quiet show with incredibly long pauses between dialogue, creating an awkward tension between the characters. However, the pauses are deliberately specified within Pinter’s script to create that awkward tension.
There’s also little chemistry between the performers, but this is an obvious directorial decision by Kate Story. Richard and Sarah are possibly one of the worst couples in drama. The audience doesn’t know whether Richard and Sarah, with all their head games and strange expectations of one another, are happy or miserable. Richard seems to be unhappy and Sarah dissatisfied but, when the tables are turned, those roles are reversed.
Although perhaps not the easiest role to cut his teeth on, Chris Culgin makes a daring stage debut as Richard. Known in Peterborough as a musician and songwriter, Chris has never acted before but he is obviously comfortable on stage and interacts with no difficulty with the more experienced Naomi DuVall.
It is fair to say that any awkward moments in Chris’s performance only add to the surreal tension in the show — but those moments are rare. It’s a strong debut by Chris in an unusual and challenging role.
I admit I always love watching Naomi DuVall perform. She gives a sensuous performance as a housewife looking for relief from her boredom, and for power over sexual appetites her husband isn’t able to satisfy on her own. But when the control of her games begins to shift, it becomes difficult to know if she is happy, miserable, emotionally controlled, or bordering on insanity.
Naomi plays all these different emotions in a series of roles that constantly change. Once again, Sarah is a complicated character inviting different levels of interpretation. Naomi is equally charming and disturbing in this strange and provocative role.
I also want to make a mention of the interesting musical selections that Kate chose for the scene breaks of the show. During some long costume changes, the audience is treated to some great songs from the early 1960s that reflect the drama on the stage, including tracks by Ray Charles, David Rose, Bobby Vinton, The Sensations, Joannie Sommers, and Barbara George.
The music not only lends its own commentary interpretation to the drama on the stage, but also establishes both the time period and the unnatural sexual attitudes of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which today seem completely alien. It’s a clever soundtrack with a lot of thought put into it.
The Lover is an interesting play offering many different interpretations. Are Richard and Sarah healthy in their sexual habits, or are they living in a destructive cycle of head games and banality? Are their games keeping a loveless relationship alive, or do they border on abuse? Although they confess their love for each other, are they even in love at all?
It’s an interesting commentary of love during the time Pinter wrote the play, but it remains relevant today despite the fact that our current society’s sexual attitudes are far more evolved. In the end, the individual audience member will have to judge what the future holds for the characters in The Lover.
But be prepared for an uncomfortable production where the silence between the characters speaks louder than the characters themselves.
The Lover runs at TTOK from Thursday, June 15th to Saturday, June 17th. Performances start at 8 p.m., with an additional 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday. Admission is $10 or pay what you can.
