Ashes to Ashes

Pinter is seldom easy, his work is complex at best and often impossible to navigate. In consequence it requires both talented performers and dexterous direction if it is to work. Fortunately for the audience at Emporium we were given both. Not that even this could make the first of two short plays, Silence, any easier to either understand or enjoy. Matthew Carrington, Tegen Hitchens and Richard Hahlo gave a committed performance but in the end it is the script which disappoints, the poetry of Pinter’s lines not creating any real sense of theatre.

Ashes to Ashes in contrast is a superb piece of writing and here Pinter’s beautiful writing is all about the play and the characters. Richard Hahlo again gives a great performance – but it is Karen Ascoe who steals the night with a gripping performance as a damaged soul, her fragility tangible and moving. Emporium in association with Lost In Space deliver an excellent evening of thought provoking theatre.

Emporium, 8 February 2014

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