Harold Pinter, perhaps best known for his pauses, dialogues within contained rooms and tormented characters, is perhaps less known for some of his one-act plays such as One For The Road and Victoria Station currently being performed in Notting Hill Gate’s newest theatre, The Print Room. These tense and translucent texts are difficult to digest, their lack of clarity over characters and situations means that under the careful direction of Jeff James, the pieces thrive, with a mysterious intensity. Both One For The Road and Victoria Station seem to fit perfectly within the crisp white structure of The Print Room which has been stripped back to its bare walls and framing. Under the intense luminous strip lighting of Mischa Twitchin’s design, the power-shifting characters in both of the plays clash together.

Victoria Station is perhaps the easier piece to follow. A driver (Kevin Doyle) is sitting in his taxi when he receives a call over the radio from the Controller (Keith Dunphy). What follows is an exchange between two men clearly lost in their lives, communicating via the impersonal means of a radio. Doyle is something of a blundering idiot, unable to state where he is, what he is doing or indeed if he can move onto the next job the Controller has for him. Dunphy however is full of rage as he spits into the microphone demanding answers. The exchange is powerful, two lone voices in the night transmitting to each other, which in turn becomes somewhat comedic. Designer Alex Lowde’s stark staging is remarkably clever as a heap of metal becomes the engine of the taxi, defining the space without really forcing it upon us.

As Victoria Station is a short piece, One For The Road is played immediately afterwards, with Doyle slowly standing and morphing into the character of Nicolas, an unknown controller within an organisation, a building which is holding captive Victor (Dunphy again) and Gila (Anna Hewson). Again Pinter doesn’t define or set the scene as such, his words alone seem to, under the direction of James, spark the tense atmosphere that One For The Road descends into. Twitchin’s lighting is again perfectly stark, as doors on either end of performance space glow a viscous, clinical, godly white.

One For The Road is a lot more difficult to follow. Pinter only gives hints to the situation the characters are within. Doyle as Nicolas doesn’t quite find the right powerful authoritive figure that is needed to command the stage as perhaps James intended, but with both Dunphy and Hewson as tragically disjointed and scared weeping figures, this isn’t a problem. The intensity of the exchanges as Nicolas intergates each of the family members is unnerving at times, and even more so as we are left in the dark about the location or what has previously happened.

Both Dunphy and Hewson are excellent within their roles here, they are pathetic characters who, under the glaring lights of interrogation, flounder and fall to begging for mercy. Perhaps it is the shortness of the pieces, or the distinct inability to really sink your teeth into some of the characters, that makes for the evening of pieces to be hard to digest. You sense your way through One For The Road using a mixture of sight and sound, atmosphere and gestures to unravel what Pinter has concocted within this room of his. It is by no means an easy couple of texts for James to tackle as a direction, but he does so well, even if I would have wanted more (but then I think there is only so far an intense character can go).

Pinter continually challenges us, both as audiences and theatre makers. He has a knack at crawling under our skins and sitting uncomfortably there, lurking. One For The Road has these qualities, and it is this that I can feel now, so whilst I found Victoria Station more appealing to watch, it is perhaps my discomfort of watching the unknown situation and characters that James and his cast have drawn out from Pinter’s dialogue that has ultimately left me feeling uncomfortable. The evening might be over within 55 minutes, but the affects of the production will last much longer.

Victoria Station and One For The Road are playing at The Print Room until 1st October. Following this, the productions will transfer to The Young Vic between 6th – 15th October.