VICTORIA STATION & FAMILY VOICES
2012 // The Warren, Brighton
"...A funny, thought-provoking and chilling production directed by Aine King."
Pinter’s early, ‘Absurdist’ short dramas are full of menace and unseen forces of control. Even the most seemingly banal and ordinary words and objects become powerful and sinister. Originally written for radio, but staged fairly frequently, Victoria Station is a duologue between a cab driver and his ‘control’ as he cruises night time London with a passenger-on-board. Family Voices is a sequence of fragmented monologues, diaries and letters spoken by the tenants of a strange and sinister boarding house.
In Áine’s production the two plays become one. She placed both dramas into one location: a hospital. ‘Control’ is a male nurse or warden playing along with the patients as they enact their fantasies. There is no ‘set’, just a huge darkness from which each of the vulnerable and damaged characters emerge, each clutching precious, significant and utterly worthless objects.
“It was all about darkness.. and control. This huge darkness that comes from inside us, and in some people creates Control, and in others creates fear or shame or guilt…or murder. A bloke in a wheelchair who thinks he’s driving a car attacks a bloke who thinks he’s his dad…a woman is assaulted…someone is strangled…and dies….and it’s a comedy.”
