Twenty years separate the first and last play in this tremendous Pinter trilogy chosen by one of the canniest theatre programmers around, the Donmar's Sam Mendes.

I've no doubt he's on to a surefire hit - even though the three plays themselves, the early The Collection and The Lover from the 1960s and the later A Kind of Alaska, surprisingly, lack the archetypal sense of menace so associated with the Pinter style and so vividly conjured, for example, in Roger Michell's National Theatre production last year of The Homecoming. Instead, directors Karel Reisz and Joe Harmston

seem to have opted for something wholly lighter, more naturalistic, as if to wipe that much over-

used adjective ''Pinteresque'' of its

starchier connotations.

Indeed, Pinter himself in the role of Harry - the older ''collector'' of men as well as chinoiserie in The Collection - leads the assault on the stuffier aspects of his reputation by playing with a mischief and cheekiness that makes you realise reverence has definitely been in the eyes of the beholders.

Playfulness, rightly or wrongly, is the abiding note of this trilogy - in Penelope Wilton's Deborah awaking from a 29-year-old sleep, a stroppy 16-year-old in the body of a forty-something; in the sparring between Douglas Hodge's wide-boy jealous husband and Colin McFarlane's trendy black clothes designer; and in the afternoon frolics of Hodge and Lia Williams in The Lover. If the result is less overtly threatening than expected - Hodge and Williams particularly seem low on erotic spark - the trilogy itself remains a fascinating study, satire and surreality intermingling, of possession, power, memory, and truth. They don't come more stylish.

n Three By Pinter is at the Donmar to June 13 and supported by The Laura Pels Foundation.