Table Of ContentTHE THEATRE OF HAROLD PINTER
Mark Taylor-Batty is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in
Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds. He is an executive member
of the Pinter Society. He assisted the author in the construction of
his official website, haroldpinter.org, and authored two sections of
that site. His publications include About Pinter: The Playwright and
the Work (2005), Roger Blin: Collaborations and Methodologies (2007)
and, with Juliette Taylor Batty, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
(2008). He is an associate editor of the Performance Ethos journal
(Intellect) and, together with Enoch Brater, he is series editor of
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama’s Engage series of books.
In the same series from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama:
THE PLAYS OF SAMUEL BECKETT
by Katherine Weiss
THE THEATRE OF CARYL CHURCHILL
by R. Darren Gobert
THE THEATRE OF MARTIN CRIMP (SECOND EDITION)
by Aleks Sierz
THE THEATRE OF BRIAN FRIEL
by Christopher Murray
THE THEATRE OF DAVID GREIG
by Clare Wallace
THE THEATRE AND FILMS OF MARTIN MCDONAGH
by Patrick Lonergan
MODERN ASIAN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE
1900–2000
by Kevin J. Wetmore, Siyuan Liu and Erin B. Mee
THE THEATRE OF SEAN O’CASEY
by James Moran
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
by Brenda Murphy
THE THEATRE OF TIMBERLAKE WERTENBAKER
by Sophie Bush
THE THEATRE OF HAROLD PINTER
Mark Taylor-Batty
Series Editors: Patrick Lonergan and Erin Hurley
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
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First published 2014
© Mark Taylor-Batty, 2014
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Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by
Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4081-7533-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
For Anna, Gabriel and Samuel
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Invasions and Oppressions 14
Awkward Investments in Enclosed Spaces: The Room,
The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Hothouse 14
The Stranger on the Threshold: A Slight Ache,
The Caretaker 38
2 The Company of Men and the Place of Women 49
The Male Church: The Dwarfs 49
Untenable Archetypes: A Night Out, Night School,
The Collection, Tea Party 54
Negotiations and Contracts: The Lover, The Homecoming 70
3 Present Continuous, Past Perfect 95
Contours and Shadows: Landscape, Silence, Old Times 95
A Foreign Country: No Man’s Land 116
4 The Impossible Family 128
Exiled: Monologue, Betrayal 128
Other Places: Victoria Station, Family Voices, A Kind of
Alaska, Moonlight 141
Family Under Threat: One for the Road, Mountain
Language, Party Time, Celebration 150
5 Politics and the Artist as Citizen 159
Anger and All That: The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter,
The Hothouse 159
Contents
Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture, Precisely,
The New World Order, Press Conference, Celebration 164
The Fist and the Kiss: Ashes to Ashes 179
6 Some Concluding Remarks 187
7 Critical and Performance Perspectives 192
The Curse of Pinter Harry Burton 192
‘Who the Hell’s That?’: Pinter’s Memory Plays of the
1970s Chris Megson 215
Revisiting Pinter’s Women : One for the Road (1984),
Mountain Language (1988) and Party Time (1991)
Ann C. Hall 232
Pinter’s Political Dramas: Staging Neoliberal Discourse
and Authoritarianism Basil Chiasson 249
Chronology 268
Notes 273
Bibliography 289
Notes on Contributors 294
Index 296
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to those who have provided supportive contexts for
me to pursue my study of and transmit my passion for Pinter’s
works in recent years: Mareia Aragay, Francis Gillen, Tali Itzhaki,
Tomaž Onič, Craig N. Owens, Avraham Oz, Sandra Paternostro,
Enric Monforte Rabascall, Linda Renton and, importantly, Mark
Dudgeon at Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. My work with Basil
Chiasson and James Hudson kept an intellectual engagement with
this body of work alive over particularly difficult periods. Basil
contributes a chapter to the final section of this book, and I’m
grateful to him and my other contributors – Harry Burton, Ann
C. Hall and Chris Megson – for adding depth to this work. Thanks
go to Ewan Jeffrey for his excavation of family structures in Pinter’s
writing; the intellectual genesis of the chapter on family in this
volume is owed to him. I also want to acknowledge all the students
on my ‘Theatricalities’ module over the years, who continue to
shine fresh lights into the corners of these dramas. I am particularly
grateful to Patrick Lonergan, whose generous and helpful comments
on the draft manuscript were invaluable. Many thanks to all the
Facebook friends who responded online to my general queries over
cultural and political history, especially Sara Allkins, Clementina
Angelina, Alex Chisholm, Paul Kleiman, Caitrin O’Seaghdha and
David Whitaker. I remain grateful for the trust that Harold Pinter
demonstrated, and for the support of Antonia Fraser. Thanks
especially go to Juliette Taylor-Batty, for her comments on drafts,
and for all her strength and care.
Quotations from the work of Harold Pinter are reproduced with
the kind permission of Faber and Faber and Grove Press.
