“Tightly elegant in its telling, Michael Cabot’s production plays out in what looks like a bombed-out building. Bek Palmer’s design is a collection of brindled corners and broken walls, through which the characters step like super-punctilious ghouls in the aftermath of war. That war is the affair between Rebecca Pownall’s purposeful Emma and Steven Clarke’s needy Jerry – and its effect on her marriage to Pete Collis’ Robert. The eerie dislocation is heightened by Pinter’s brilliant defiance of convention by telling first of the aftermath and then working backwards over nine years to the affair’s genesis. It is a timeframe which leaves plenty of space for the audience to know, with certainty, what is about to happen. None react with quite such brilliance as Pownall, falling from relaxed demeanour to an impressively expressive, but impassive mask, as Robert reveals his knowledge of the affair to Emma. A fascinating, revealing production of Pinter’s most accessible play, which bristles with tension and strides off at an almost breathless pace.”
Thom Dibdin – The Stage

“The timeless themes of emotional destruction and the ruthless consequences of betrayal wrought through the actions of Emma and Jerry are explored and examined with consistently high quality acting throughout under the no-nonsense directorship of Michael Cabot. The cast is excellent. Rebecca Pownall is superb as the needy Emma. Steven Clarke plays the besotted lover Jerry with aplomb. And Pete Collins does a very good job as the violent-but-wronged husband Robert while Max Wilson as The Waiter showcases his emerging talent. This is a strong production of the highest quality.”
James Marston – East Anglian Daily Times

“The disquieting mood, which director Michael Cabot sets for the play, captures perfectly the uncomfortable revelations of the script. The silences for which Pinter is famous are here used to create an intimate sense of embarrassment between the characters. Cabot does not lighten the mood; we are made aware of changes in scene and time not by using, say, music from the period, but by stark announcements. Even the changes in props are undertaken in icy silence. There is a strong sense of corruption in the play; although the characters are prosperous, Bek Palmer’s set drops them amongst sections of shabby buildings that have fallen into disrepair. By the time the action rewinds to the passionate start of the affair, we are all too aware of the corrosive effect it will have on the characters. This is mainly captured in the performances of Pownall and Collis. Clarke plays Jerry as a constant egoist throughout the play; self-satisfied and confident in his own powers of deception, only when he becomes aware that the affair is no longer secret does he show any confusion that the conventions of betrayal might have been reversed. Pownall gives a very human performance of someone mature enough to bring the affair to a close and to show a degree of repentance for her actions. Collis offers a particularly fine interpretation showing the development of Robert’s defensive reactions to shield himself from the pain of his wife’s unfaithfulness. An excellent and suitably unsettling show from LCT.”
Dave Cunningham – WhatsOnStage ****