Gee reviews a 1997 London production of Pinter's play. Praising both the text and the new performance, the critic contends that thirty-two years after its debut, the play "still has the power to shock. "

A beautiful, elegant woman, Ruth, sprawls on a sofa in a drab working-class front room which contains five men: her husband, Teddy, her husband's two brothers, her elderly father-in-law and his brother. Her husband's youngest brother, Joey, lies heavily on top of her, grinding his pelvis into her in a simulation of intercourse, while the other brother caresses her hair and the two older men watch, transfixed. Soon her husband, who loves her, will stand by passively, as his family (whom she has only just met) concoct a scheme to set her up as a prostitute in the West End, servicing them at home in the evenings.

Thirty-two years after its London premiere in...