Review Roundup: L.A. Critics Review Wooster Group's THE ROOM Despite Samuel French Ban

Despite licensing agent Samuel French forbidding all promotion and reviews for The Wooster Group's production of Harold Pinter's THE ROOM in Los Angeles at REDCAT, critics have decided to weigh in on the show, which runs now through February 14, 2016.

THE ROOM is directed by Wooster Group director Elizabeth LeCompte and features performances by Group members and associates Ari Fliakos as Mr. Kidd and Mr. Sands, Philip Moore as Riley, Scott Renderer as Bert Hudd, Suzzy Roche as Mrs. Sands, and Kate Valk as Rose.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times: Samuel French Inc., the licensing agent representing the Harold Pinter estate in the U.S., has decreed that the Wooster Group's production at REDCAT of Pinter's first play, "The Room," shall not be reviewed. Let's call this then a critical assessment, an evaluative essay, a ruminative exploration of the work and the producing concerns it raises. Hell, call it whatever you want. A licensing company can withhold the rights to a play, but it can't dictate the terms of the theatrical conversation. And this production pitting the Wooster Group's postmodern high jinks against Pinter's dreamlike menace is too inviting a spectacle for a critic to ignore.

Director Elizabeth LeCompte is, indeed, remarkably faithful to the written text...The company's trademark avant-garde style, layering an elaborate technical design over a nonliteral, nonlinear approach to stage action, is strangely flattened. Pinter's drama, with its distinctive mix of idiomatic precision and surreal story, suffers an equivalent loss of vigor...The remarkable cultural contribution of the Wooster Group entitles the company to that most valuable of creative freedoms: the freedom to fail.

Jordan Riefe, The Hollywood Reporter: Yet while the Wooster Group's embattled but mesmerizing production straddles a startling divide between nervous laughter and lack of reason, it is easier to sit through than one would imagine. Director Elizabeth LeCompte's influences appear to run the gamut from Chinese folk music...to the patter of Abbott and Costello's classic "Who's on First?" routine, as characters pose questions prompting unrelated responses...LeCompte and her cast are loyal to the text while treading a disturbing border between dread and absurdity. And as nonsensical lines are traded with disconcerting self-assurance, even more confusing is the terror LeCompte builds into the silences, counterintuitive rests that brim with Lynchian portent. As challenging as The Room is, the Wooster Group has made it accessible without compromising Pinter's fearless but demanding writing.

Jeff Favre, LA Downtown News: ...there are only a few chances to see this intriguing, well executed, but hardly revolutionary 40-minute deconstruction of Pinter's one-act, which helped push the boundaries of theater for the next several decades. Samuel French's decision to limit the exposure of this new take on Pinter seems like a missed opportunity to promote a lesser-known offering from his canon. Pinter purists, who are likely to despise the reading of stage directions, radical shifts in tone and cast members singing some of the lines, can blame Wooster while still revering the author. Meanwhile, fans of this transformed Room can point to how Pinter's timeless and universal text allows it to thrive even with such a dramatic facelift. The reality probably lies somewhere in the middle..The Wooster Group...is doing what it loves to do - taking theater in a direction it has never been.

Pictured: Ari Fliakos in THE ROOM. Photo by Paula Court.