Harold Pinter (1930–2008)

Five stars although I'm not sure I would be able to read (or watch) it again anytime soon. Memorable, trippy, but also faintly depressing especially if you've ever interacted with someone like any of these three men.

What is it all about? Not easy to say. But it is absolutely fascinating pathos, absurdity, mental-illness, ineptitude, and self-preservation by paralyzed inaction. All within a cluttered, barely functioning room.

At the end of the play, two weeks later, everything is as it was show more when the play started. You've been introduced to the men only within the most claustrophobic confines and wonder how they must narrowly navigate the outside world so precariously. Characters Mick, Aston, and Davies have danced and parled, yet with no ultimate effect or change on the future of each of their lives. Mick will still be planning to use his van to get his business really going. Aston will work on that plug, bring home junk, and be ready any minute to build a shed. And Davies will, in bad shoes, still be a down and out old man with his papers over in Sidcup.

Wait, maybe one thing changed: the dripping into the bucket finally stopped. Or perhaps just paused, like the forever pause of these men's lives. show less

A masterful collection of one of the most distinct playwrights who ever lived. High praise, granted, and yes I'm woefully under-read in my theater and haven't seen as much as I should have. But this is something I hope to rectify as soon as time and sanity allow (living that grad student life).

Some specifics, Pinter's writing is brilliantly precise in delineating what's implied and what's left out completely. A true master of ratcheting up dread and tension, Pinter gives his readers (and show more audiences) just enough to apprehend the ripples of something bigger and (usually) more horrible rumbling just beneath the surface of the dialogue and setting.

Coming as I do from a mostly prose background reading this collection was a crash course in mood and ambiance, in showing such restraint that you become a master of manipulating your audience's sense of frustration, anxiety, and, yes, even comedy too. Black Comedy, Kafkaesque definitely, but akin to the spirit of the rest of his abilities as a writer, Pinter's humorous asides are as well calculated as a finely tuned watch.

Though maybe not as hammer to your face effective as his predecessor and friend Samuel Beckett, Pinter trumps his friend in subtly with taut prose that talks around a story, a point, a philosophy and even an ideology in a way that would make Ernest Hemingway jealous.

In summation, this is an incredible collection and one that I'm already sorry to see go (it was a rental) but I will not soon forget the effect Pinter evoked with his words, his nuances, his infamous pauses, and most memorably, his absences on me. In what was left out and left behind for the sake of what was to be implied and hinted at, whispered towards, Pinter truly has no equal. show less

I actually listened to this as a BBC Radio Drama (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kr71s)that starred Olivia Colman and Andrew Scott. I'd heard he'd won the BBC Audio Drama, Best Actor Award for it, and I liked him from BBC Sherlock so I thought it would be interesting.

This is a interesting play. First of all, it's presented chronologically backwards... We meet the two people who had an affair after their affair is over, as they are having a discussion over lunch. The woman reveals she has show more told her husband that she'd cheated on him with the ex-lover, who is his best friend. He's angry because she didn't consult him first, and then we hear his conversation with his friend... who has really known for several years. The ex-lover / wife had lied when we first heard her.

It proceeds from there, slowly revealing various lies the friends/spouses/lovers have told each other over the years and highlights their reactions to the various "betrayals".

Very thought provoking. I think my favourite moment of the play was when Andrew Scott's character, Jerry, angrily shouts at his best friend, Robert, for not telling him that he's known about the affair that he'd had with his wife, Emma, for four years... Jerry feels a fool for thinking all was fine between them and that his betrayal of his friend with Emma was a secret, while his friend Robert simply didn't act on the knowledge and acted normally. The bizarreness of Jerry being angry about NOT being confronted for having an affair with his best friend's wife was incredibly well acted... and while he didn't really have any moral right to be angry, you could see why he was upset. Both Emma and Robert knew the truth was out, and neither had told him.

It was really a great moment, well acted... In a play full of moments worth listening to. Makes you think about all the different lies and different kinds of betrayals we have in daily life.

(Evidently the play was based on the author's real life affair with a famous female BBC broadcaster.) show less

One of a few plays I am happy to reread/rewatch. Harold Pinter's inspiration for this was his long-term affair with Joan Bakewell, and he has said how he felt betrayed when he learnt that Joan's husband had known about the affair for a long time and not confronted him. And a wonderful exposure of human nature in the first scene when Jerry says, having heard talk that his ex-lover is seeing another man that he felt irritation that no one gossiped about us like that. Funny and painful, sparse show more mundane dialogue and plenty of pauses that speak a thousand thoughts. And an arresting back-to-front structure, so the audience know more than the characters as the play progresses. Wonderfully thought-provoking about relationships and what we remember about ourselves. show less