[In the following review, Hall applauds Pinter's The Lover as a comedy of sexual manners.]

Like all theatres across the country, Actor's Theatre of Louisville (ATL) must provide exciting plays and still turn a profit. For many theatres, the choice is simple—avoid the unusual. Given its Humana Festival, it is clear that ATL takes the road less traveled, offering new works every spring. But the artistic staff felt that many theatre classics, those under-produced gems that do not appeal to American audiences, were being ignored. At their prompting, Free Theatre was born in 2000; now once a year ATL produces a classic and charges nothing for the performances. Such an experiment introduces theatre in general, and ATL in particular, to audiences who could not afford regular admission, in itself a laudable goal. But with theatre becoming just another option in an increasing array of entertainment choices, the decision to produce significant but rarely produced works is essential for theatre's survival. Last year's inaugural production was August Strindberg's The Creditors. Free Theatre 2001 presented The Lover and A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter.

As president of the Harold Pinter Society, I was pleased to see the two Pinter one-acts given such a sterling staging, for while the performances are free, they are not cheap. Staged in ATL's 318-seat Bingham theatre and directed by veteran ATL member William McNulty, the two Pinter pieces were given thoroughly professional productions.

The Lover was such a stunning example of the power of theatre that I will focus on this production. Originally produced in 1963, the play is a comedy of sexual manners in which a married couple, Sarah and Richard, live staid middle-class existences by day and night, but their afternoons are filled with illicit affairs. We soon learn, however, that the lovers are the married couple themselves, who have created a sexual game, perhaps to avoid the monotony of monogamy.

The ATL production captured the couple's schizophrenic life beautifully. The set was tasteful and, while it did not scream early 1960s, it did scream compulsive housekeeping. The set was divided into living areas, and furniture gleamed throughout. A large bed appeared starched, and a table covered with a neat tablecloth marked the entryway into the house. Clearly, we were in the domestic arena. The couple met in this same space for their romantic interludes, putting the domestic props to erotic uses. They, for example, never used the bed during their afternoon “sexcapades”; instead, the entryway table served as a love nest to which the couple retreated to complete their mating ritual, and a small, well-placed wastebasket was later used as a drum, a prop during Richard's foreplay.

Costumes also emphasized the double, yet shared, life of the couple. Fastidious care marked their dress in the domestic arena. Like a Jackie O. precursor, Sarah wore a tight suit, sensible shoes, and a French knot. Richard wore the uniform of middle management: a black suit and tie with a white shirt. However, their erotic ensemble included a leather jacket for Richard and for Sarah a tight black dress with four inch heeled shoes.

The most insightful bit of staging was the use of mirrors. A dressing table and long wardrobe mirrors were frequently and cleverly used by McNulty to overcome the challenges of blocking for theatre-in-the-round, but more importantly, the mirrors also emphasized a thematic element in the play. Frequently, the couple would communicate with one another through the mirrors, thereby indicating their discomfort with direct contact—contact without fantasy or illusion.

First-rate performances by Barbara Gulan and Will Bond completed the production. Gulan embodied the role of housewife, joyfully tending to her husband's needs after his long day at the office. Bond, ever the man's man, showed absolutely no emotion when informed that his wife's lover would be around one day. When the couple met in the afternoon, the electricity between Gulan and Bond left little doubt the couple truly enjoyed their compartmentalized existences. Consequently, when Richard proposed to end the meetings, it was clear, from Gulan's desperate and shocked responses, that such a change would alter the dynamics of their entire relationship, not just their sex lives, but their marriage and their identities were at stake.

All in all, ATL should be applauded for its experiments in Free Theatre and its productions of important dramatic works that, for whatever reason, do not result in revenue for contemporary American theatres.