Harold Pinter's A SLIGHT ACHE Is Humorous Study In Fear And Loathing In Visiting Production At Odyssey Theatre 

-Harold Pinter fans can enjoy 72 minutes of quintessential Pinter when Jack Heller directs the Nobel Prize-winning playwright's rarely-produced early work, A Slight Ache, in a visiting production at the Odyssey Theatre. Dance On Productions in association with Linda Toliver and Gary Guidinger presents a six week run, August 26 through October 1.

Pinter's tragicomedy of manners is a funny, ominous and unsettling journey into the human psyche. As married couple Flora and Edward breakfast in their garden, a wasp circles menacingly overhead while Edward feels “a slight ache” in his eyes. And who is that derelict match seller hovering just beyond the garden gate?

Susan Priver, recently seen in productions of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (directed by Heller) and Kingdom of Earth at the Odyssey, stars as Flora opposite Henry Olek (The Guardsman, Pinter's The Lover) as Edward and Shelly Kurtz (The Great Sebastians, Walking the Tightrope) as the match seller. All three reprise the roles they played in an earlier production of A Slight Ache, 17 years ago, that was an LA Weekly “Pick of the Week” and which Backstage West called “a must-see.”

A Slight Ache has been described as “teeter[ing] on either side of the comedy/menace line that Pinter specialized in. The dread coalesces through the play, growing more and more focused on the match seller, a mysterious 'other' who comes to represent Flora's and Edward's every fear, fantasy and lost hope.”

“It's an intimate portrait of a long term marriage that reveals the terror of living with someone so long without ever really knowing them,” explain Priver and Olek, who are also partners in their personal lives. “It's all about what's going on underneath the words. When we first performed this play in 2006, we had only been together two years. Seventeen years later, we bring a very different perspective to these characters and to their relationship.”

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticence and even silence to convey the substance of a character's thought, which often lies several layers beneath and contradicts their speech. Pinter's plays are ambivalent in their plots, presentation of characters and endings, but they are works of undeniable power and originality. They typically begin with a pair of characters whose stereotyped relations and role-playing are disrupted by the entrance of a stranger. The audience sees the psychic stability of the couple break down as their fears, jealousies, hatreds, sexual preoccupations and loneliness emerge from beneath a screen of bizarre yet commonplace conversation.

The creative team for A Slight Ache includes scenic designer Jeff G. Rack, lighting designer Ellen Monocroussos, sound designer  Chrisropher Moscatiello, costume designer  Michael Mullen and graphic designer Kiff Scholl. The production stage manager is Sarah Dawn Lowry. Dance On Productions produces in association with Linda Toliver and Gary Guidinger.

Performances of A Slight Ache take place Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., August 26 through October 1. There will be two preview performances on Thursday, Aug. 24 and Friday, Aug. 25 both at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $20 to $40 (reserved seating). The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025. For reservations and information, call (310) 477-2055 x 2 or go to OdysseyTheatre.com.