Editing Harold Pinter (section)

===As playwright===
Pinter was the author of 29 plays and 15 dramatic sketches and the co-author of two works for stage and radio.<ref name=Plays>{{cite web |editor1=Evans, Daisy |editor2=Herdman, Katie |editor3=Lankester, Laura |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/index.shtml |title=Plays |work=haroldpinter.org |access-date=9 May 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613203248/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/index.shtml |archive-date=13 June 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>  He was considered to have been one of the most influential modern British dramatists,<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/3949591/Harold-Pinter-one-of-the-most-influential-British-playwrights-of-modern-times.html |title=Harold Pinter: one of the most influential British playwrights of modern times |last=Staff |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=25 December 2008 |location=London |issn=0307-1235 |oclc=49632006 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110518121424/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/3949591/Harold-Pinter-one-of-the-most-influential-British-playwrights-of-modern-times.html |archive-date=18 May 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name=NYTobit>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/theater/26pinter.html |title=Harold Pinter, Playwright of the Anxious Pause, Dies at 78 |first1=Mel |last1=Gussow |first2=Ben |last2=Brantley |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=25 December 2008 |location=New York City |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103184959/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/theater/26pinter.html |archive-date=3 November 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Along with the 1967 [[Tony Award for Best Play]] for ''The Homecoming'' and several other American awards and award nominations, he and his plays received many awards in the UK and elsewhere throughout the world.<ref>Gordon, "Chronology", ''Pinter at 70'' xliii–lxv; Batty, "Chronology", ''About Pinter'' xiii–xvi.</ref>  His style has entered the English language as an adjective, "[[Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work#Pinteresque|Pinteresque]]", although Pinter himself disliked the term and found it meaningless.<ref name=Wark>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4780000/newsid_4785400 |title=Harold Pinter on Newsnight Review with Kirsty Wark |work=[[Newsnight Review]] |publisher=BBC |access-date=26 June 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112034520/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5110060.stm |archive-date=12 November 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

===="Comedies of menace" (1957–1968)====

Pinter's first play, ''[[The Room (play)|The Room]]'', written and first performed in 1957, was a student production at the [[University of Bristol]], directed by his good friend, actor [[Henry Woolf]], who also originated the role of Mr. Kidd (which he reprised in 2001 and 2007).<ref name=Plays/>  After Woolf mentioned that he had an idea for a play, he asked Pinter to write it so that he could direct it to fulfill a requirement for his postgraduate work.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bowker |first1=Gordon |title=Glimpses of a Biographer's Diaries 1961 – 2000 |date=2025 |publisher=Ramdei Bowker |location=London |isbn=978-1-0684423-9-1  |pages=471 |edition=Kindle |url=https://amzn.eu/d/5ZNvFdY |access-date=22 March 2025}}</ref> Pinter wrote it in three days.<ref name=MerrittWoolf>Merritt, "Talking about Pinter" 147.</ref> The production was described by Billington as "a staggeringly confident debut which attracted the attention of a young producer, [[Michael Codron]], who decided to present Pinter's next play, ''[[The Birthday Party (play)|The Birthday Party]]'', at the [[Lyric Hammersmith]], in 1958."<ref name=Billobit>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/dec/25/pinter-theatre |title=The most provocative, poetic and influential playwright of his generation |first=Michael |last=Billington |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=25 December 2008 |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group|GMG]] |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |oclc=60623878 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110227094739/http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/dec/25/pinter-theatre |archive-date=27 February 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

Written in 1957 and produced in 1958, Pinter's second play, ''The Birthday Party'', one of his best-known works, was initially both a commercial and critical disaster, despite an enthusiastic review in ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' by its influential drama critic [[Harold Hobson]],<ref>{{cite news |last=Hobson |first=Harold |title=The Screw Turns Again |newspaper=The Sunday Times |date=25 May 1958 |location=London}}</ref> which appeared only after the production had closed and could not be reprieved.<ref name=Billobit/><ref>Hobson, "The Screw Turns Again"; cited by Merritt in "Sir Harold Hobson: The Promptings of Personal Experience", ''Pinter in Play'' 221–25; rpt. in {{cite web |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_bdayparty.shtml |title=The Birthday Party – Premiere |first=Harold |last=Hobson |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709085019/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_bdayparty.shtml |archive-date=9 July 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>  Critical accounts often quote Hobson:

{{blockquote|I am well aware that Mr Pinter[']s play received extremely bad notices last Tuesday morning. At the moment I write these [words] it is uncertain even whether the play will still be in the bill by the time they appear, though it is probable it will soon be seen elsewhere. Deliberately, I am willing to risk whatever reputation I have as a judge of plays by saying that ''The Birthday Party'' is not a Fourth, not even a Second, but a First [as in Class Honours]; and that Pinter, on the evidence of his work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London&nbsp;... Mr Pinter and ''The Birthday Party'', despite their experiences last week, will be heard of again. Make a note of their names.}}

Pinter himself and later critics generally credited Hobson as bolstering him and perhaps even rescuing his career.<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 85; Gussow, ''Conversations with Pinter'' 141.</ref>

In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of ''The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace'', a play by [[David Campton]], critic [[Irving Wardle]] called Pinter's early plays "[[comedy of menace]]"—a label that people have applied repeatedly to his work.<ref name=Merritt3>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 5, 9, 225–26, and 310.</ref> Such plays begin with an apparently innocent situation that becomes both threatening and "[[Absurdism|absurd]]" as Pinter's characters behave in ways often perceived as inexplicable by his audiences and one another. Pinter acknowledges the influence of [[Samuel Beckett]], particularly on his early work; they became friends, sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments.<ref name = Wark /><ref name=BillingtonWark>See Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 64, 65, 84, 197, 251 and 354</ref>

Pinter wrote ''[[The Hothouse]]'' in 1958, which he shelved for over 20 years (See "Overtly political plays and sketches" below).  Next he wrote ''[[The Dumb Waiter]]'' (1959), which premièred in Germany and was then produced in a [[double bill]] with ''The Room'' at the [[Hampstead Theatre|Hampstead Theatre Club]], in London, in 1960.<ref name="Plays"/>  It was then not produced often until the 1980s, and it has been revived more frequently since 2000, including the [[West End theatre|West End]] [[Trafalgar Studios]] production in 2007.  The first production of ''[[The Caretaker (play)|The Caretaker]]'', at the [[Arts Theatre|Arts Theatre Club]], in London, in 1960, established Pinter's theatrical reputation.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://roundabouttheatre.org/fc/fall03/jones.htm |title=Roundabout Theatre Company – |first=David |last=Jones |work=Front & Center Online |publisher=Roundabout Theatre Company |date=Fall 2003 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727223238/http://roundabouttheatre.org/fc/fall03/jones.htm |archive-date=27 July 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>  The play transferred to the [[Duchess Theatre]] in May 1960 and ran for 444 performances,<ref name=sheffcare>{{cite web |title=Background to The Caretaker |url=http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/creativedevelopmentprogramme/productions/thecaretaker/background.shtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090514101843/http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/creativedevelopmentprogramme/productions/thecaretaker/background.shtml |archive-date=14 May 2009 |work=Sheffield Theatres education resource |publisher=Sheffield Theatres |access-date=11 July 2011}}</ref> receiving an [[Evening Standard Award]] for best play of 1960.<ref>{{cite web |last=Shama |first=Sunita |title=Pinter awards saved for the nation |url=http://www.mla.gov.uk/news_and_views/press_releases/2010/Pinter_awards |work=British Library Press Release |publisher=Museums Arts and Libraries |access-date=11 July 2011 |date=20 October 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727121002/http://www.mla.gov.uk/news_and_views/press_releases/2010/Pinter_awards |archive-date=27 July 2011}}</ref>  Large radio and television audiences for his one-act play ''[[A Night Out (play)|A Night Out]]'', along with the popularity of his revue sketches, propelled him to further critical attention.<ref>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 18.</ref>  In 1964, ''The Birthday Party'' was revived both on television (with Pinter himself in the role of Goldberg) and on stage (directed by Pinter at the [[Aldwych Theatre]]) and was well received.<ref>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' 18, 219–20.</ref>

By the time Peter Hall's London production of ''The Homecoming'' (1964) reached [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] in 1967, Pinter had become a celebrity playwright, and the play garnered four [[Tony Award]]s, among other awards.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tonyawards.com/p/tonys_search?start=0&year=&award=&lname=&fname=&show=%3Ci%3EThe+Homecoming%3C%2Fi%3E |title=The Homecoming – 1967 |work=tonyawards.com |publisher=Tony Award Productions |year=2011 |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181201140353/https://www.tonyawards.com/p/tonys_search?start=0&year=&award=&lname=&fname=&show=%3Ci%3EThe+Homecoming%3C%2Fi%3E |archive-date=1 December 2018 |url-status=dead}}</ref> During this period, Pinter also wrote the radio play ''[[A Slight Ache]]'', first broadcast on the [[BBC Third Programme]] in 1959 and then adapted to the stage and performed at the [[Arts Theatre|Arts Theatre Club]] in 1961.  ''A Night Out'' (1960) was broadcast to a large audience on [[ABC Weekend TV]]'s television show ''[[Armchair Theatre]]'', after being transmitted on BBC Radio 3, also in 1960.  His play ''[[Night School (play)|Night School]]'' was first televised in 1960 on [[Associated Rediffusion]].  ''[[The Collection (play)|The Collection]]'' premièred at the [[Aldwych Theatre]] in 1962, and ''The Dwarfs'', adapted from Pinter's then unpublished novel of the same title, was first broadcast on radio in 1960, then adapted for the stage (also at the Arts Theatre Club) in a double bill with ''[[The Lover (play)|The Lover]]'', which had previously been televised by Associated Rediffusion in 1963; and ''[[Tea Party (play)|Tea Party]]'', a play that Pinter developed from his 1963 short story, first broadcast on [[BBC TV]] in 1965.<ref name=Plays/>

Working as both a screenwriter and as a playwright, Pinter composed a script called ''[[The Basement (play)#Origin: "The Compartment"|The Compartment]]'' (1966), for a trilogy of films to be contributed by [[Samuel Beckett]], [[Eugène Ionesco]], and Pinter, of which only Beckett's film, titled ''[[Film (film)|Film]]'', was actually produced.  Then Pinter turned his unfilmed script into a television play, which was produced as ''[[The Basement (play)|The Basement]]'', both on [[BBC 2]] and also on stage in 1968.<ref name=BRChronology>Baker and Ross, "Chronology" xxiii–xl.</ref>

===="Memory plays" (1968–1982)====

From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Pinter wrote a series of plays and sketches that explore complex ambiguities, elegiac mysteries, comic vagaries, and other "quicksand-like" characteristics of [[memory]] and which critics sometimes classify as Pinter's "[[memory play]]s".<ref name=BillingtonETP>Billington, Introduction, "Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics", ''Europe Theatre Prize–X Edition'', [[Turin]], 10–12 March 2006. Retrieved 29 January 2011.  [[Cf.]] Billington, chap. 29: "Memory Man" and "Afterword: Let's Keep Fighting", ''Harold Pinter'' 388–430.</ref> These include ''[[Landscape (play)|Landscape]]'' (1968), ''[[Silence (1969 play)|Silence]]'' (1969), ''[[Night (sketch)|Night]]'' (1969), ''[[Old Times]]'' (1971), ''[[No Man's Land (play)|No Man's Land]]'' (1975), ''The Proust Screenplay'' (1977), ''[[Betrayal (play)|Betrayal]]'' (1978), ''[[Family Voices]]'' (1981), ''[[Victoria Station (play)|Victoria Station]]'' (1982), and ''[[A Kind of Alaska]]'' (1982).  Some of Pinter's later plays, including ''Party Time'' (1991), ''[[Moonlight (play)|Moonlight]]'' (1993), ''[[Ashes to Ashes (play)|Ashes to Ashes]]'' (1996), and ''[[Celebration (play)|Celebration]]'' (2000), draw upon some features of his "memory" [[dramaturgy]] in their focus on the past in the present, but they have personal and political resonances and other tonal differences from these earlier memory plays.<ref name=BillingtonETP/><ref name=MemoryPlays>See Batty, ''About Pinter''; Grimes; and Baker (all ''passim'').</ref>

====Overtly political plays and sketches (1980–2000)====
Following a three-year period of creative drought in the early 1980s after his marriage to Antonia Fraser and the death of Vivien Merchant,<ref>Billington, ''Harold Pinter'' 258.</ref> Pinter's plays tended to become shorter and more overtly political, serving as critiques of [[oppression]], [[torture]], and other abuses of human rights,<ref name=MerrittPIPGrimes>Merritt, ''Pinter in Play'' xi–xv and 170–209; Grimes 19.</ref> linked by the apparent "invulnerability of power."<ref>Grimes 119.</ref>  Just before this hiatus, in 1979, Pinter re-discovered his manuscript of ''[[The Hothouse]]'', which he had written in 1958 but had set aside; he revised it and then directed its first production himself at [[Hampstead Theatre]] in London, in 1980.<ref name=HHNote>{{cite web |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_hothouse.shtml |title=The Hothouse – Premiere |first=Benedict |last=Nightingale |work=Originally published in the [[New Statesman]], archived at haroldpinter.org |year=2001 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613220750/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_hothouse.shtml |archive-date=13 June 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Like his plays of the 1980s, ''The Hothouse'' concerns authoritarianism and the abuses of power politics, but it is also a comedy, like his earlier [[Comedy of menace|comedies of menace]].  Pinter played the major role of Roote in a 1995 revival at the [[Minerva Theatre, Chichester]].<ref name=MerrittGrimesHH>Merritt, "Pinter Playing Pinter" (''passim''); and Grimes 16, 36–38, 61–71.</ref>

Pinter's brief dramatic sketch ''Precisely'' (1983) is a duologue between two bureaucrats exploring the absurd power politics of mutual nuclear annihilation and [[Deterrence theory|deterrence]].  His first overtly political one-act play is ''[[One for the Road (Harold Pinter play)|One for the Road]]'' (1984).  In 1985 Pinter stated that whereas his earlier plays presented metaphors for power and powerlessness, the later ones present literal realities of power and its abuse.<ref>Hern 8–9, 16–17, and 21.</ref> Pinter's "political theatre dramatizes the interplay and conflict of the opposing poles of involvement and disengagement."<ref>Hern 19.</ref>  ''[[Mountain Language]]'' (1988) is about the Turkish suppression of the [[Kurdish language]].<ref name=BillingtonGussow/>  The dramatic sketch ''The New World Order'' (1991) provides what Robert Cushman, writing in ''[[The Independent]]'' described as "10 nerve-wracking minutes" of two men threatening to torture a third man who is blindfolded, gagged and bound in a chair; Pinter directed the British première at the [[Royal Court Theatre|Royal Court Theatre Upstairs]], where it opened on 9 July 1991, and the production then transferred to Washington, D.C., where it was revived in 1994.<ref name=NWO>{{cite web |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_newworldorder.shtml |title=Ten Nerve Racking Minutes of Pinter |first=Robert |last=Cushman |work=[[Independent on Sunday]], archived at haroldpinter.org |date=21 July 1991 |access-date=27 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614003407/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_newworldorder.shtml |archive-date=14 June 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>  Pinter's longer [[political satire]] ''Party Time'' (1991) premièred at the [[Almeida Theatre]] in London, in a double-bill with ''Mountain Language''.  Pinter adapted it as a screenplay for television in 1992, directing that production, first broadcast in the UK on [[Channel 4]] on 17 November 1992.<ref name=PT>Grimes 101–28 and 139–43; {{cite web |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_partytime.shtml |title=Plays |editor=Batty, Mark |work=haroldpinter.org |year=2011 |access-date=3 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614004649/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_partytime.shtml |archive-date=14 June 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

Intertwining political and personal concerns, his next full-length plays, ''[[Moonlight (play)|Moonlight]]'' (1993) and ''[[Ashes to Ashes (play)|Ashes to Ashes]]'' (1996) are set in domestic households and focus on dying and death; in their personal conversations in ''Ashes to Ashes'', Devlin and Rebecca allude to unspecified atrocities relating to the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]].<ref name=MerrittGrimesATA>Merritt, "Harold Pinter's ''Ashes to Ashes'': Political/Personal Echoes of the Holocaust" (''passim''); Grimes 195–220.</ref> After experiencing the deaths of first his mother (1992) and then his father (1997), again merging the personal and the political, Pinter wrote the poems "Death" (1997) and "The Disappeared" (1998).

Pinter's last stage play, ''[[Celebration (play)|Celebration]]'' (2000), is a social satire set in an opulent restaurant, which lampoons [[The Ivy (United Kingdom)|The Ivy]], a fashionable venue in London's West End theatre district, and its patrons who "have just come from performances of either the ballet or the opera. Not that they can remember a darn thing about what they saw, including the titles.  [These] gilded, foul-mouthed souls are just as myopic when it comes to their own table mates (and for that matter, their food), with conversations that usually connect only on the surface, if there."<ref name=BrantleyLC>{{cite web |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/lincolnfestival.shtml |title=Pinter's Silences, Richly Eloquent |last=Brantley |first=Ben |author-link=Ben Brantley |work=[[The New York Times]] archived at haroldpinter.org |date=27 July 2001 |access-date=9 May 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613213945/http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/lincolnfestival.shtml |archive-date=13 June 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>  On its surface the play may appear to have fewer overtly political resonances than some of the plays from the 1980s and 1990s; but its central male characters, brothers named Lambert and Matt, are members of the elite (like the men in charge in ''Party Time''), who describe themselves as "peaceful strategy consultants [because] we don't carry guns."<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 60.</ref>  At the next table, Russell, a banker, describes himself as a "totally disordered personality&nbsp;... a psychopath",<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 39.</ref> while Lambert "vows to be reincarnated as '[a] more civilised, [a] gentler person, [a] nicer person'."<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 56.</ref><ref>Grimes 129.</ref>  These characters' deceptively smooth exteriors mask their extreme viciousness.  ''Celebration'' evokes familiar [[Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work#Pinteresque|Pinteresque]] political contexts: "The ritzy loudmouths in 'Celebration'&nbsp;... and the quieter working-class mumblers of 'The Room'&nbsp;... have everything in common beneath the surface".<ref name=BrantleyLC/> "Money remains in the service of entrenched power, and the brothers in the play are 'strategy consultants' whose jobs involve force and violence&nbsp;... It is tempting but inaccurate to equate the comic power inversions of the social behaviour in ''Celebration'' with lasting change in larger political structures", according to Grimes, for whom the play indicates Pinter's pessimism about the possibility of changing the status quo.<ref>Grimes 130.</ref>  Yet, as the Waiter's often comically unbelievable reminiscences about his grandfather demonstrate in ''Celebration'', Pinter's final stage plays also extend some [[expressionism|expressionistic]] aspects of his earlier "memory plays", while harking back to his "comedies of menace", as illustrated in the characters and in the Waiter's final speech:
{{blockquote|My grandfather introduced me to the mystery of life and I'm still in the middle of it.  I can't find the door to get out.  My grandfather got out of it.  He got right out of it.  He left it behind him and he didn't look back.  He got that absolutely right.  And I'd like to make one further interjection.<br /> ''He stands still.  Slow fade''.<ref>Pinter, ''Celebration'' 72.</ref>}}

During 2000–2001, there were also simultaneous productions of ''[[Remembrance of Things Past (play)|Remembrance of Things Past]]'', Pinter's stage adaptation of his unpublished ''Proust Screenplay'', written in collaboration with and directed by [[Di Trevis]], at the [[Royal National Theatre]], and a revival of ''[[The Caretaker (play)|The Caretaker]]'' directed by [[Patrick Marber]] and starring [[Michael Gambon]], [[Rupert Graves]], and [[Douglas Hodge]], at the [[Comedy Theatre]].<ref name=Plays/>

Like ''Celebration'', Pinter's penultimate sketch, ''Press Conference'' (2002), "invokes both torture and the fragile, circumscribed existence of dissent".<ref>Grimes 135.</ref>  In its première in the [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]]'s two-part production of ''Sketches'', despite undergoing chemotherapy at the time, Pinter played the ruthless Minister willing to murder little children for the benefit of "The State".<ref name=Sketches>{{cite web |url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_sketches.shtml |first=Alastair |last=Macaulay |title=The Playwright's Triple Risk |work=[[The Financial Times]] archived at haroldpinter.org |access-date=9 May 2009 |date=13 February 2002 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613214229/http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_sketches.shtml |archive-date=13 June 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>