Debut Pinter for Jack Riddiford at Chichester Festival Theatre

The play is in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre, directed by CFT artistic director Justin Audibert, running from June 8-July 13.

“When I was at drama school ten or 11 years ago I think I avoided Pinter a bit out of fear and probably the same with Shakespeare,” Jack says. “I was wet behind the ears and it seemed that there were rules or ways of doing it and people's opinions and I just thought that I wouldn't know how. But I think what has to happen with the classical texts is that you can be taught to do it but I do think you have to find your own way into it as well, that you have to make your own connection with it and that's what's happening now as I am discovering Pinter.

“People talk about the pauses and that side of it but doing it what I'm discovering is that the pauses are not styles. It's just realism. The pauses have to be active. It's a wonderful lesson as an actor. It's pure realism. The characters talk like human beings. It's not just a question and answer type conversation. It is conversation through intentions.”

Jack cites a moment where a question is met by the question ‘Why are you asking that?’: “It is about trying to work out what the other person means and it is about picking up their cues. You're trying to fill in the blanks.”

Which is all part of the challenge that Pinter presents to an actor: “It is some of the hardest stuff that I've ever done. You've just got to drill it. It's about being ruthless with the intentions but also you're just drilling it and drilling it and drilling it but also coming back to why they're doing what they're doing and why they're saying what they're saying. On the surface nothing happens but it's absolutely all rooted in the intentions.”

We’re in London, at the tail end of the 1950s, in a derelict room stuffed with junk, detritus and a bucket for the leaky ceiling. Enter two men: the room’s occupant, the gentle and damaged Aston, and Davies, a mercurial drifter whom Aston has brought in from the streets. Soon they’re joined by the building’s owner, Aston’s brother: the explosively unpredictable Mick.

Jack is playing Mick: “And you don't really know anything about him but I think that I can't think about that too much. You can overthink his violence and you can overthink his love for Aston his brother and other people's opinions as to what Mick is. Like any character you can only come from what is in the text, and it's an amazing challenge as an actor.”

It's a play about isolation and about our inability to communicate: “It's three people with unbelievably strong wants and desires and objectives that are so opposite and that's where the conflict and the humour come from. It's a funny play. Pinter always intended for his plays to be funny. It's not about gags but it's about finding the humour in the absurdity of the situations.”