Julian Sands - Pinter's poetry - Edinburgh

You'd think that something directed by John Malkovich would be a bit, well, better really. This show had loads and loads of publicity - pictures of Malkovich handling out his own flyers on the Royal Mile in the Guardian, both he and Sands interviewed on the Culture Show, Sands on Radio 4, blah, blah. Certainly drew me to it.

Pinter's poems are the stars of the show, pithy, political and pleasingly personal. I knew some of them, but his love poems were a revelation.

I think my disappointment is that actors, even good ones like Sands coached by the poet themselves, as he was by Pinter before his death, just don't do poetry justice. Its music was lost in making meaning, over-rehearsed 'chat' between poems that lost all spontaneity, gesture, and actor-ly bowing. Poets just don't bow like that after their readings. Note to self - better go hear a poet reading their own or another's work.

Worth a try though if you not acquainted with Pinter's poems. It's on tour later in the year.