Huitker Movement Theatre

Of the 2002 Bohemian production…

“We want you to leave this play feeling raw and hateful, as if you’ve peeled a scab prematurely” is an invitation sorely missed in most evenings of theatre. Being an “innovative young theatre company” makes such demands an obligation on company and audience, perhaps... Pinter’s masterly theatre of menace in “One For the Road” - with all its overtones for politics from our Minister for Immigration’s wonderful twisting of the Woomera reality is absolutely legalistic terms to all the extremities of absolutist autocrats like Suharto, the Taliban, Pol Pot, Saddam and many others (you can decide where to place Saudi Arabia, Israel, Yasser Arafat or george Bush on this sliding scale) - lived up to the promise.

George Huitker as Nicholas, the interrogator, nicely underplayed the role, exactly as real interrogators do, and we certainly felt raw and hateful in sympathy with Victor (Arran McKenna), his wife Gila (Claire Bocking) and son Nicky (Simon Read).

It’s good to see groups like Bohemian take the theatrical reins into their own hands, but I look forward to their writing a program which avoids weak “humour”: it diminishes the work they present on stage, especially Pinter.

Frank McKone, The Canberra Times

In April 1995, I was invited by Belinda Pearson to her production of “One For the Road” by Harold Pinter. I sat very comfortably and complacently in the Ralph Wilson Theatre looking over the set which was very simple - a table with a very nice set of crystal glasses and decanter, a desk with a phone or an intercom and nothing else, and a chair set just to the left of centre stage. The lights dimmed and a man entered - an ordinary looking man. He looked around for a moment and then picked up the phone: “Bring him in,” he said. Someone is coming in for an interview, I said to myself. But the man who entered was in a dreadful state of terror. His clothing was torn and he had obviously been tortured. From that moment for the next 45 minutes, my complacency and my comfortable world vanished. I was caught in a nightmare as I shared every second of the play with the three victims - the man - an intellectual presumably, his wife and his very young son.

I lived in terror for the duration, because I had not read the play and I had absolutely no idea what would happen next. I think that the menace and the threat of terror is probably far more terrifying than the actual pain or the torture. This man Nicholas was so ordinary in appearance, so smooth and pleasant of tongue, that the threat and the menace were all the more real and all the more frightening. But then he laughed and that laugh will haunt me all the days - it prickled the skin, in tingled the scalp and chilled the blood. This was a man who appeared sane, collected and even a little affable until he laughed - and that was the moment when the fear turned to terror. For this was a man out of control, a man who could and might do anything. Even if I had read the play or seen it before, I believe I would have still been frightened, so powerful was the impact of the play, the four players and the director.

I had another chance to see “One for the Road” in 1996, and now it is 2002 and there is a third production at the Street Theatre performed by Bohemian Productions. This time the play is directed by Nick Johnson, and the man who speaks with the voice of God is George Huitker - the same man who terrified me in 1995 as the perpetrator of evil, terror and torture.

The three victims, father, mother and son, are victims not only of their torture, but I think they could also be victims of Pinter and the smooth tongue of George Huitker, whose timing of word and action would terrify me on the stage, so that even now when I am familiar with the play, I would never quite know just how George would deliver his chilling words and I would never know just how slowly or swiftly he might perform certain actions. This is definitely a play which an audience should come to in innocence. I am still shocked even on a third viewing, but I am now somewhat injured because I know what will happen and what will not happen.

I had only one tiny difficulty with this particular production. The acting spec is quite small because it is delineated by a very solid wall which creates something of a confining boundary to the action and the possibilities of horror. I would rather have had no visible boundary to the space so that there was no visible boundary to the possibilities of cruelty and torture. I wanted to feel that there was no limit to this man and his powers.

That said, this is a play which everyone should see, because Harold Pinter believes that people should know what is going on in this poor tortured world. And this is a performance which everyone should see for the incredible George Huitker and these three victims played by Arran McKenna, Claire Bocking and Simon Read.

Wendy Brazil, Artsound

Of the 1996 Paradox production...

Harold Pinter apparently wrote this piece of theatre over a night when he was exploring the issue of internment. He allowed the story of an interrogator and a victim to just unfold, without any thought for the audience who might see it. The end result is that this play is perhaps one of the most confronting pieces of theatre one will experience. It is confronting because at no time is the victim ever accused of any crime and because the victim's seven-year old son (played by a young boy) is also interrogated. we later learn that the boy is tortured as is his mother.

This piece of theatre is only bearable emotionally because it is reasonably short (40 minutes in length). Within that time we watch Phil Roberts as the smooth, vile interrogator, Nicolas, totally annihilate the prisoner, Victor, played by George Huitker, Victor's wife, Gila, played by Sarah Snell and their son, seven-year old Nicky, played by Cameron Woolcock. Phil Roberts accomplishes this interrogation with frightening precision and skill. The very bare set with just a chair, desk and sideboard and the very intimate nature of the Currong Theatre add a feeling of stark reality to a world, as quoted by Pinter, where 'at least ninety countries are engaged in torture as an accepted routine'. The meticulously dressed Nicolas in suit and tie and the deterioration of the prisoners in clothing and demeanour as the play progresses further adds to the feeling of despair and total compassion for the victims of Nicolas' suave sarcasm. His dealings with the young boy who answers all the questions in the honest and open way that children deal with their world is very distressing and probably one of the more memorable scenes.

As a production the whole show was tremendous with all four actors performing at a high level. I can quite understand why Phil Roberts chose to perform as the interrogator and not the victim as he was in the Eureka! Production.

Lorena Param, MUSE

This is a short play - barely 40 minutes - but the combination of Pinter's honesty and writing skills with the clarity of characterisation achieved particularly by Phil Roberts, as Nicolas the interrogator, makes this production one you should not miss.

It's a confronting play because you come away understanding how a torturer thinks. I'm glad it didn't last longer because I was ready to break all my principles of non-violence: I could easily have shot that interrogator if someone handed me the gun.

Pinter has said, "I'm aware that I do possess two things. One is that I am quite violent myself... On the other hand, however, I am quite reticent". He has used this knowledge in creating Nicolas, who we see interrogating a man, his wife and their son - each separately. Torture is the norm, happening off-stage before and after each interview.

The reality which Amnesty International confronts every day in probably 90 countries around the world is made real for us in the theatre in the slippery character of Nicolas. This is a brave production for Amnesty for it forces us to come to terms with the effort we must make to turn around the figures from 1995: 85 countries holding prisoners of conscience; 46 000 people held without charge; 27 countries imprisoning people after unfair trials; 10 000 people subjected to torture including 4500 who died in custody in 54 countries; 63 countries where people were executed without trial; 140 000 people in 49 countries who have "disappeared"; 2900 people executed in 41 countries which still impose the death penalty.

Intelligent direction of Pinter's tightly controlled, carefully stylised dialogue has created spine-chilling tension. I would like this play to be put on as in-service training in every police station and prison in the country: our own human rights record is not yet perfect - enacting this torturer before those who hold such power daily, in Paradox's minimal setting, must help change the dark side of our culture.

Frank McKone, The Canberra Times

Of the 1995 H&P production...

This short, sharp play from the master of the menacing, Harold Pinter, has a rather brief season. Belinda Pearson's production is a creditable attempt at a difficult play on a challenging topic; that of torture.

Pinter's scripts are always heavy with threat and menace, and it is not surprising that he has come up with one about the relationship between the tortured and the torturer. Tragically, this is a theme that never seems to be outdated by events. George Huitker as the torturer, Nicolas, and Matthew Taylor as his victims go some distance towards setting up some powerful tension. Sarah Snell does a good job in a tellingly brief scene as Gila, the victim's wife, as does Cameron Woolcock as their young son.

But this is difficult stuff to sustain. Ironic though it may appear, this is one of those instances where aspects of realism (like torn clothing and carefully applied bruises) do not carry enough theatrical weight to ensure total belief. This production does not quite take the audience to that point. But a packed house on opening night certainly listened with quietness.

Alanna Maclean, The Canberra Times

Director Belinda Pearson sees this short play as a dramatic exploration of the relationship between interrogator and victim (MUSE 140, p.19). It is an intense piece of theatre and George Huitker as the interrogator gives a sustained performance. Matthew Taylor, Sarah Snell and Cameron Woolcock as the victims also give creditable performances. The physical torture occurs off stage; it is the mental and emotional torture that the audience is exposed to on stage.

Despite the controlled and well directed performances, I felt that the play failed to move the audience. Were the victims not hurt and destroyed enough? Are we all too used to the idea of torture to be moved? Didn't we know enough about the characters to feel for them? As a character study it failed to give great insight into the minds of the characters. As a study of the relationship between victim and interrogator, it was too superficial.

It struck me that the interrogator was mad. Would it have been more chilling to see him as a normal person (one the audience recognised as living next door)? We can always distance ourselves from someone who is abnormal; greater insight is achieved, and perhaps the potential evil within ourselves is more recognised, when we can see more of ourselves in a character.

It made me angry too find that the suffering of the woman seemed to be interpreted as part of her husband's torture; she was the victim's wife. Surely she was also a victim? It was a very male perspective of torture and suffering. It is only recently that rape has come to be considered a crime of war.

Perhaps theatre has to be entertaining too, to be moving. Huitker states that he saw the play not as entertainment but as a provocative piece of theatre... 'people should leave with thoughts of: we mustn't be like that' (MUSE 140, p.19). But because the characters seemed remote and not like me, I left just feeling depressed.

Kay Dixon, MUSE

To one member of the audience, George Huitker's performance was such that it was necessary to report him to the board of education. Anyone who could portray such a character as Nicolas, the torturer, is surely not suitable to be teaching young people. Or so went the logic of the audience member.

Yet while the production certainly maintained its tension, Huitker's performance did not exploit the truly frightening dimensions of the torturer's mind and motivations: the interplay between the man's beliefs, human foibles and needs, his actions and justifications. And contrary to the pre-season hype, I didn't feel the production was necessarily too dark or explicit for younger theatre going audiences. Torture exists: it is permitted by human beings with the same pyschological, emotional and physical endowments as any of us.

So what brought about the kind of reaction which confused an on-stage persona with the actor's own and off-stage teaching responsibilities? The play is structured like a short story: building one point and leaving it without resolution. There is no plot. The audience cannot hope for a theatrical twist. It is enough to observe the action and make our own associations.

From early in the performance we see the whole, as with a sculpture. Then as it progresses we begin to see the components of the whole; we see behind the persona of the torturer, a human being with strengths and weaknesses. he is no mechanical cut out - and this is frightening because many of these characteristics are observable in our daily interactions with people. Just seeing a monster on stage would have allowed us greater distance and safety; seeing more vicious and graphic enactments of the torturer's trade would be obscene, salacious or pornographic. But in seeing the teasing and toying; the use of innuendo; the witholding of information; the invocation of God; the subjugation of individuals for some greater ideal or purpose: we find ourselves in familiar territory.

The lack of an antagonist to counter the force of the torturer, along with the absence of any change in the central character over the duration of the play, leaves the audience with the very uneasy feeling of having witnessed more than a contrivance. When two of the most commonly held key elements in drama are missing, we, as the audience, are left to our own devices of association to complete the sculptural details of the work.

The same applies to the actors presenting the work. The more commonly used, traditional methods of creating a performance are difficult to apply to such a play. While the intentions and motivations of the central character are implicit in the text, there is no structural development with clear goals and resolutions. This leaves the actor very exposed.

Even so, the production played to full houses on each of its three performances. The independent producers must get full credit for scaling the piece to fit their own level of production expertise, audience expectation and financial considerations. In this sense it worked: creating discussion, highlighting tensions between art and life (following on from Greg Taylor's Liz and Phil) and making the audience take the work and the subject matter very seriously. To achieve this without subsidy and without the administrative backing of a major theatre company certainly deserves applause.

Joe Woodward, Theatre Australasia