Menace and Melancholy

Harold Pinter has gradually metamorphosed from angry young leftist to tetchy old curmudgeon--catch his hysterically anti-American screed in the latest issue of the Utne Reader. Fortunately for his dedicated admirers, Pinter is more disciplined as a playwright than as an editorialist.

Pinter uses the misanthropic fury fostered by his upbringing in the anti-Semitic Britain of the 1930s to brilliant dramatic effect. His righteous rage oozes between the seams of his cryptic dramas, seldom erupting into polemicism.

One of his lesser-known works, “The Collection,” at City Garage, is more explicit in subtext than many of his more prominent plays, but nonetheless maintains the creepy ambiguity that characterizes Pinter at his best.

The focus in the play’s revolving romantic quadrangle is street-bred Bill (Tom Clyde), transformed into a tony dress designer by his wealthy older admirer Harry (Richard Grove). In the stew that results when the mysterious Jimmy (Nathan Dana) accuses Bill of having an affair with his dress designer wife, Stella (Natalie Bovis), truth shifts as rapidly as the balance of power, and sex is reduced to a tool for achieving dominance--or exacting submission.

Director Frederique Michel and a subtle cast inform Pinter’s text with menace and melancholy. As the alluringly androgynous Bill, Clyde crafts a modern-day Dorian Gray, whose youthful charm conceals a precocious perversity. Dana captures the volatile sexual ambivalence just under Jimmy’s posturing machismo. As Harry, Bill’s besotted but resentful mentor, Grove effectively mingles pathos with pathology. Bovis displays a sexy petulance as the erring (or much-maligned) Stella, but her callow character seems ill-equipped to play this increasingly vicious game.

Details in Charles A. Duncombe’s opulent set hint that these affluent characters are recent transfers from the working class. Michel’s deceptively leisurely staging charges the action--and every Pinter pause in between--with dread and foreboding.

BE THERE

“The Collection,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends July 30. $15. (310) 319-9939. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.