The Lover (2019)

The Lover

by Harold Pinter

Performance dates

Fri, 15 Feb 2019
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 cancelled
Sat, 23 Feb 2019 cancelled
Fri, 1 Mar 2019 cancelled
Sat, 2 Mar 2019 cancelled
Fri, 8 Mar 2019 cancelled
Sat, 9 Mar 2019 cancelled

Cast

Sarah

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Maria Valentina Kiefer

Richard

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Wade Gonsoulin

John

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Christian Berlitz

Crew

Director

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Florian Siebrecht

Co-Director

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Joana Amaral

Dramaturg

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Rosemary Bock

Poster, Program, Set-Photography

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Christina Simon | Markenflora

Music, composed & performed by

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Sascha Reif

Stage Management

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Johanna Ehlers

Stage Helpers

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Insa Heinig, Friederike Meyer

Hair & Make-Up

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Alexandra Hartmann-Flechtner

Light & Sound

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B. Kleinrensing, Christoph Schucht

Set Constructor

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Lothar Silbe

The Lover Programme 1
The Lover Programme 2

Synopsis

“Is your lover coming today?” – Richard asks his wife Sarah. He is. Sarah is looking forward to it while Richard goes to work without any concerns. That’s how a similarly profound as captivating drama about two people begins, who love each other, who need each other, yet who ask a lot of each other. 

In dizzying ambiguous dialogues and surprisingly emotional twists Richard and Sarah ask and answer the timeless questions about what people in love should, could and can be for each other.

About the Play

Ambiguity is a predominant feature of Pinter’s work. The married couple in The Lover are not what they seem. Pinter invites us to look beneath the surface of their conversation. Communication exists on a different level and it is up to the audience to discover the meaning; Pinter is not going to interpret it for us.The relationship in our play may look absurd, but it is not chaotic. Pinter loves order. Nothing in his work is left to chance – even his famous “pauses” are carefully planned. The Lover is balanced in its structure, and the language, apparently everyday and banal, is rhythmical and poetic, the dialogue carefully weighted and controlled.

About the Author

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) was a controversial winner of the Nobel prize for literature (2005). He was a British writer, actor and director, well acquainted onstage with the old-fashioned drawing-room dramas à la Noel Coward, which he parodied in his own plays. The 1950s brought change to theatre. It was now influenced by existentialism, the theatre of the absurd (he greatly admired Samuel Beckett, e.g. Waiting for Godot), verse theatre (e.g T. S. Eliot), “angry theatre” (Look Back in Anger was performed at the Keller in 2016). Writers wanted more freedom, but censorship did not end in Britain till 1968.

Pinter’s early plays, which include The Lover, were described as “comedy of menace” and were of a personal nature. His later plays and other writings became more political; Pinter was a staunch supporter of CND and the peace movement.

Reviews

Pictures

photo: Schultz
photo: Schultz