THEATER REVIEW : Pinter’s ‘Quartet’ Has Style, but It’s Short on Clarity

We are in the midst of a Harold Pinter winter.

Santa Monica’s City Garage has launched an anthology of Pinter playlets titled “Quartet.” Meanwhile, Matrix Theatre has won praise for a revival of “The Homecoming,” the British playwright’s famously creepy look at family dysfunction, and Pinter’s “One for the Road,” a one-act about a tortured political prisoner, is sharing a bill with Sam Shepard’s “Geography of a Horse Dreamer.”

With “Quartet,” City Garage has proved it knows how to stage challenging modern texts with taste, elegance and spare, seductive style. In this case, however, coherence proves elusive.

Director Frederique Michel’s production tries but ultimately fails to unite the four plays under one narrative umbrella, supposedly set among guests “in the deserted lobby of a luxury hotel on Christmas Eve.” Apropos of the plays’ starkness, Charles Duncombe’s set includes only a few plush chairs and other furniture.

In the opener, “Monologue,” a man (Mark Laing) seated on a divan reminisces with an unseen friend about the former’s long-ago love affair with a woman who became the friend’s wife. Though brief, this speech is vintage Pinter, with economical use of language and dry, stiletto-sharp wit.

The show loses its way from there, as Michel switches back and forth between scenes from the next two works. In “Dialogue for Three,” a forlorn woman (Romney Robinson) has conflicted feelings for two men (both played by F. Scott Collins--no relation to this writer), while in “Night” a couple (David Lowe and Louise Barlow) have conflicting memories of their first meeting.

As if the plays themselves were not difficult enough, mixing them in this way makes them even harder to appreciate. At times, the jumble summons unpleasant memories of director Alain Resnais’ excruciatingly indescribable (and indescribably excruciating) art film “Last Year at Marienbad.”

The lengthy closer, “Family Voices,” partly redeems the evening with the intriguing Oedipal saga of a young man (Jaime A. Arze) struggling to break free of his depressive mother (Strawn Bovee) and the memory of his domineering father (Richard Courtney , heard as an offstage voice).

Despite uneven performances, the production cultivates an intellectual, atmospheric feel too often missing in local theater. But most viewers would probably welcome just a bit more clarity.

* “Quartet,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 25. $15. (310) 319-9939. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.