Harold Pinter in Five Plays

Well known for his masterful pauses and the dark undertones of his plays, Harold Pinter has been recognized the world over as a paragon of what British theatre – and Absurdism on the whole – has to offer.

Celebrate his literary work by exploring a sample of five of his titles that reflect the breadth of his talent.

The Birthday Party (1957) (US/UK)

The Birthday Party is the first of Pinter’s “comed[ies] of menace” as coined by critic Irving Wardle (borrowing from the subtitle of the play The Lunatic View), which characteristically start off with what seems to be a normal circumstance that quickly devolves into a space both dangerous and absurd. An early example of Theatre of the Absurd, this is Pinter’s second full-length play – but one whose tumultuous first reception and later better reviews brought the playwright to international attention.

Written in 1957, the play premiered in Cambridge, England on April 28, 1958, where it was received with bewilderment. A later enthusiastic review from The Sunday Times by Harold Hobson perhaps rescued his career, as Hobson pushed back on the bad press to say: “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.” As such, it would later open on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on October 3, 1967 and see productions worldwide, from professional to amateur. Now, the piece is one of Pinter’s best-known works.

In the play, a small birthday party in a rundown seaside boarding house becomes a nightmare when two sinister strangers arrive unexpectedly. Meg and Petey live in a small seaside boarding house with their boarder, a strange chap named Stanley. Two strangers, a sleek man named Goldberg and his musclebound henchman McCann, arrive unexpectedly. Meg naively accommodates them with a room, and decides to arrange a birthday party for Stanley. At the party, Goldberg and McCann play cruel games with the boarder, breaking his glasses, making a buffoon of him and ultimately pushing him over the psychotic precipice.

The Caretaker (1959) (US/UK)

One of Pinter’s most commercially successful plays, this 3-actor drama blends realism and absurdism while providing hearty fodder for brilliant actors. In the play, a man named Aston brings a tramp – with pretensions, even if to the world he may seem to be a pathetic old creature – named Davies into his derelict household shrine. All that is left of his past now is the existence of some papers, papers that will prove exactly who he is and enable him to start again. Aston, too, has his dreams. He has always been good with his hands and there is so much to do in the house. Human nature, however, is a great spoiler of plans.

The play first premiered in London at the Arts Theatre Club in 1960 before transferring to the Duchess Theatre, where it would run for 444 performances and receive the Evening Standard Award for Best Play. The play established Pinter’s theatrical reputation as a writer both intelligent and stylistically daring and would even go on be the bridge between Pinter’s screenwriting and theatre writing. In 1963, it became the first play of his own that Pinter adapted himself, as screenwriter, to film. Original cast members Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence, joined by Robert Shaw, would reprise their roles in this film adaptation.

The Homecoming (1964) (US/UK)

Ambiguous, enigmatic and fraught with tension, this two-act drama – and another of Pinter’s best-known plays – wrestles with concepts of power, sex and the morality of family life. It first opened at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon in June of 1965, under the direction of Peter Hall, before transferring to the Music Box Theatre on Broadway, where it would open on January 5, 1967. In its New York premiere, The Homecoming won four Tony Awards, including Best Play, making it Pinter’s first win at a major theatrical awards ceremony.

The play takes place in an old and slightly seedy house in North London where there lives a family of men: Max, the aging, crude patriarch; his ineffectual brother Sam; and two of Max’s three sons, both unmarried – Lenny, a small-time pimp and Joey, who dreams of success as a boxer. Into this sinister abode comes the eldest son Teddy, now a successful professor of philosophy in America. After six years abroad, Teddy brings his wife Ruth, to meet the family for the first time. In the style that became a trademark, Pinter creates mounting tension, with insidiously bizarre accusations and proposals by the men to Ruth, all giving  way to an ominous game of cat and mice.

One for the Road (1989) (US/UK)

After a creative lull in the early 1980s due to some personal tragedies, Pinter’s plays took on a more political tone. Considered one of Pinter’s most overtly political works, One for the Road offers a blistering criticism of totalitarian regimes. Pinter directed the 1989 world premiere and later played the role of Nicolas in a 2001 Gate Theatre production in Dublin.

In its powerful statement about the abuse of human rights by governments, the allegorical play finds an unctuous and “civilized” interrogator humiliating the doomed members of a family of three who have become enemies of the state. The three – mother Gila, father Victor and seven-year-old son Nicky – are kept locked away in individual rooms and ruled over by the all-powerful officer Nicolas. In a warning to all countries, Pinter highlights how such abuses might happen anywhere, even in democracies, if we tolerate or ignore such actions elsewhere.

Celebration (1999) (US/UK)

The last play written by Pinter in his lifetime, Celebration, is part of the third classification of his plays known as the “memory plays.” Their premiere dates stretch from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, but each explores ambiguity, mystery, vagueness and the slipperiness of memory. No Man’s Land (US/UK) is another well-known piece from this era.

Back to the Celebration, this one-act play was first presented in a double bill with Pinter’s first-ever play, The Room (US/UK), on March 16, 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London. The play begins inauspiciously enough before developing into a tangle of menacing undercurrents.

The piece begins in a fashionable restaurant where two gangster-ish brothers, formerly from the East End but now “strategy consultants who enforce the peace” are celebrating a wedding anniversary with their wives, who are sisters. At the next table, a banker is dining with his wife, formerly his secretary. The various diners’ conversations intersect with existential musings and the general chatter of an upscale restaurant. Like most Pinter plays, the ordinary meal and talk evolves into a dark complexity of thematic through-lines, from the blurriness of love and hate in relationships to even incest. Violent yet wildly funny, this play displays a vivid zest for life.

To discover more of Harold Pinter’s work, explore his collection at Concord Theatricals in the US or the UK.