harold pinter (1 Viewer)

[taubstumm]

...has just won the nobel prize for literature

.|..|

 

[Super Dexta]

mad! and he doesn't even make any sense.

 

[Thumbelina]

ah, much deserved. "the birthday party", "the caretaker" and "the examination" are all amazing pieces done right on stage. real head-twisters.

 

[photon]

Bet the Gate Theatre is wetting its collective pants over this news. They couldn't have asked for better PR.

Paul

 

[MDR]

I saw a cartoon that had the punchline 'A Pinter play is yer only man.'

 

[Anne OMalley]

Poor productions of Pinter tend to fall into one of two camps: either they play Pinter's text for easy laughs (of which plenty can usually be found) or they play it with an agonisingly leaden seriousness. To me, Pinter is the most interesting playright since Shakespeare so having to endure poor productions is pretty painful.

The BBC "filmed" (actually, videotaped) a really nice version of "The Birthday Party" in the 70s. There's also a film version which was directed, improbably, by William Friedkin (who went on to helm "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection").

By the way, the version of "The Examination" I know is a short story, by the way. I never heard of a dramatised version. Is there one?

ah, much deserved. "the birthday party", "the caretaker" and "the examination" are all amazing pieces done right on stage. real head-twisters.

 

[MDR]

Poor productions of Pinter tend to fall into one of two camps: either they play Pinter's text for easy laughs (of which plenty can usually be found) or they play it with an agonisingly leaden seriousness. To me, Pinter is the most interesting playright since Shakespeare so having to endure poor productions is pretty painful.

The BBC "filmed" (actually, videotaped) a really nice version of "The Birthday Party" in the 70s. There's also a film version which was directed, improbably, by William Friedkin (who went on to helm "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection").

By the way, the version of "The Examination" I know is a short story, by the way. I never heard of a dramatised version. Is there one?

I'm afraid I can't agree or disagree with you as I only know one cartoon that makes a pun on his name.

 

[taubstumm]

Poor productions of Pinter tend to fall into one of two camps: either they play Pinter's text for easy laughs (of which plenty can usually be found) or they play it with an agonisingly leaden seriousness. To me, Pinter is the most interesting playright since Shakespeare so having to endure poor productions is pretty painful.

i went to see the homecoming last year at the gate, which had a bit of a tendency towards the easy-laughs end of things, though i think it was more the audience doing this than the actors - anything that could possibly be interpreted as a 'joke' was followed by guffaws from the i'm-having-such-a-delightful-evening-at-the-theatre people. it went on for a while, but then slowly dried up, as lines that were being delivered dead flat (and thus could be interpreted as 'punchlines') drew less and less laughter. and then the line that goes something like "i've never had a whore in this house, not since your mother was here, the bitch" was followed by nervous titters and some noticeable gasps. it was cool. from then on everybody realised that this wasn't a comedy, and from then on the whole thing had the pinteresque-menace-silence-malevolence-blah-blah-blah thing perfectly.

 

[Anne OMalley]

I find theatres foul but I went to see that production too. Not bad, I suppose. It was nice to go to a play that didn't make me too nauseous. My last visit to a theatre was to The Abbey to see "A Doll's House". It sickened me on so many levels I had to leave at the interval.

(We actually went to The Abbey's box office to ask for our money back but there was nobody there. Mis-managment, my arse...)

i went to see the homecoming last year at the gate, which had a bit of a tendency towards the easy-laughs end of things, though i think it was more the audience doing this than the actors - anything that could possibly be interpreted as a 'joke' was followed by guffaws from the i'm-having-such-a-delightful-evening-at-the-theatre people. it went on for a while, but then slowly dried up, as lines that were being delivered dead flat (and thus could be interpreted as 'punchlines') drew less and less laughter. and then the line that goes something like "i've never had a whore in this house, not since your mother was here, the bitch" was followed by nervous titters and some noticeable gasps. it was cool. from then on everybody realised that this wasn't a comedy, and from then on the whole thing had the pinteresque-menace-silence-malevolence-blah-blah-blah thing perfectly.

 

[taubstumm]

i've also just taken a look at their webshite and realised that the homecoming wasn't last year, it was 2001. doh. stupid memory. stupid brain.

 

[Thumbelina]

The BBC "filmed" (actually, videotaped) a really nice version of "The Birthday Party" in the 70s. There's also a film version which was directed, improbably, by William Friedkin (who went on to helm "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection").

i thought the friedkin film was great, the bbc one i didnt know about, must check it out

By the way, the version of "The Examination" I know is a short story, by the way. I never heard of a dramatised version. Is there one?

whoops, made a mistake with that, sorry. it's only the short story i know, loved it though.

 

[nuke terrorist]

he kind of lost me when i saw the documentary bbc (?) did on him several years ago it showed his home in london which was simliar to the mansions near buckingham palace minor royals live in. opulent in the extreme. also he lived in an even larger place in the sixties. his wife is i believe an aristocrat so maybe the father in law chucked in. his best stuff is a long time ago so why now? he might do a sartre as he doesn't need the money.

 

[Rogue]

Brand new harold pinter radio play "voices" streaming here: 45min

Commissioned in celebration of hs 75th birthday, music by james clarke!


Get it while it's hot, the BBC only stream programmes for a week after airing and that was monday so it could be taken down any time now.

edit: actually this one's up for 2weeks. Also available in 5.1 surround if y'all have that on your desktop speakers.

 

[Audiodelic]

i've also just taken a look at their webshite and realised that the homecoming wasn't last year, it was 2001. doh. stupid memory. stupid brain.

Tom, I had the same problem, I thought it was more recently than 2001 but I really liked that production. Ian Holm was so sinister and it's true, the laughs gave way to a darker, unexpected angle.

Anyone going to see The Betrayal? It opens tonight.

 

[ICUH8N]

Gonnae try and get to it next week, yes.

 

[Anne OMalley]

There is that opinion on Pinter because, yes, his wife is Lady Antonia Fraser and, yes, he lives in a big house and, yes, he is undoubtedly now part of some kind of artistic establishment.

But as for the first two points, I find them pretty trivial. If we're going to talk in terms of social class, it has to be admitted that much of the greatest western art has been by members of the bourgeoisie rather than the working class (whatever that term means nowadays). In any case, it's a mistake on many levels to conflate the style of a writer's life with that of his/her work, even though there are obvious links between the life and the writing. This is such a huge subject - suffice to say that literary criticism has thankfully long since dug itself out of the hole that is the biographical approach.

But I think it's interesting that although Pinter is widely celebrated and a member of a certain British social stratum - effectively a kind of artistic elite - in very important ways his work is still outside of the mainstream. It has been said that his influence is huge but, as far as I can see, it has been superficial. I'm thinking of the stylistic mimicry of Pinter you sometimes get in David Mamet, for instance.

The fact is that most British and American theatre remains steadfastly naturalistic, despite the supposedly towering influences of the great "non-naturalists" Beckett and Pinter. If those two were really as influential as they probably should be, English-language stage drama might be in a far more interesting place than it is.

As it stands, Anglophone drama suffers from an anachronistic parochialism that places it stylistically somewhere in the late 19th century, much closer to Ibsen than to Pinter. Whatever you think about Pinter's work in the 1980s and 1990s (and I prefer the earlier stuff, personally), all of his work remains utterly modernist and for that reason it remains in a singular and very isolated place in these islands.

That is the context in which his membership of the British cultural elite should be understood, I think. When Pinter gets overshadowed by innovative, daring young playwrights, maybe we can turn away from his extraordinarily challenging body of work. Until then, he's the only punk in town.

he kind of lost me when i saw the documentary bbc (?) did on him several years ago it showed his home in london which was simliar to the mansions near buckingham palace minor royals live in. opulent in the extreme. also he lived in an even larger place in the sixties. his wife is i believe an aristocrat so maybe the father in law chucked in. his best stuff is a long time ago so why now? he might do a sartre as he doesn't need the money.

 

[Rogue]

As it stands, Anglophone drama suffers from an anachronistic parochialism that places it stylistically somewhere in the late 19th century, much closer to Ibsen than to Pinter. Whatever you think about Pinter's work in the 1980s and 1990s (and I prefer the earlier stuff, personally), all of his work remains utterly modernist and for that reason it remains in a singular and very isolated place in these islands.

That is the context in which his membership of the British cultural elite should be understood, I think. When Pinter gets overshadowed by innovative, daring young playwrights, maybe we can turn away from his extraordinarily challenging body of work. Until then, he's the only punk in town.

Slightly off-topic, but it's the same in contemporary music (contemporary classical, contemporary art music, sound-art, whatever you want to call it...). Most people in the field are still working from pre or proto modernist model, stylistic imitation rather than actual artistic progression; sad.

 

[Super Dexta]

I find theatres foul but I went to see that production too. Not bad, I suppose. It was nice to go to a play that didn't make me too nauseous. My last visit to a theatre was to The Abbey to see "A Doll's House". It sickened me on so many levels I had to leave at the interval.

(We actually went to The Abbey's box office to ask for our money back but there was nobody there. Mis-managment, my arse...)

jaysus, it wasn't that bad, was it? you missed getting to see torvald in the nip in the second half. v hott.

 

[potlatch]

The only Pinter I've seen is 'The Servant', some 1960s adaptation of a novel by some dude, where some evil valet and a housemaid play dirty tricks on their master, who's a total idiot. I thought it was incredible. The atmosphere of the film was really oppressive but it was the script that did it. So that's the only Pinter I know apart from reading the odd Grauniad article.

I watched it years ago, them I watched 'The Silence' by Bergman shortly after that. Thought that was incredible too, and I've always put Pinter in that mould since.

Are his plays like this? When they're performed well?

 

[Anne OMalley]

They can be. "The Servant" is very typical of Pinter's output at that time. (I nearly wrote "Printer's output" there...) Joseph Losey was a brilliant interpreter of Pinter's screenplays - very sympathetic to the nuances of in the language. That film is often read as a portrait of swinging 60s London but that's like calling The New Testament a biography of a carpenter.

Check out "Accident" and "The Go-Between" too. "The French Lieutenant's Woman", though not directed by Losey, was also a mind-bogglingly clever film.

Paul Schrader's version of "The Comfort of Strangers" is a little too happy with itself for my liking, and it has some of the annoying tics I associate with student productions of Pinter - overlong silences, needlessly posturing characters and the like.

I believe Pinter also wrote a screenplay of Shakespeare's "King Lear" but I don't think it ever got made. Would love to see that.

The only Pinter I've seen is 'The Servant', some 1960s adaptation of a novel by some dude, where some evil valet and a housemaid play dirty tricks on their master, who's a total idiot. I thought it was incredible. The atmosphere of the film was really oppressive but it was the script that did it. So that's the only Pinter I know apart from reading the odd Grauniad article.

I watched it years ago, them I watched 'The Silence' by Bergman shortly after that. Thought that was incredible too, and I've always put Pinter in that mould since.

Are his plays like this? When they're performed well?