Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2014

Black Stripe Theater presents a pair of Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter’s greatest and most challenging plays: Ashes to Ashes and One for the Road. In Ashes to Ashes, a revenant from a terrible past is called up as a married couple quarrel over the wife’s one-time lover. In One for the Road, Nicolas, the head of the state security apparatus, interrogates a family who are suspected of seeking political change. Both plays, says Tokyo director Timothy Harris, are “relevant to a time in which the ‘surveillance state’ has become a dangerous reality, in which torture has come to be regarded as acceptable in states that previously eschewed it, and in which civil freedoms are being lost.” There will be a brief talk by and discussion with director and cast after each performance.

Trance Mission, Mar 28-30.