Harold Pinter
The Birthday Party, Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath review - Pinter still packs a punchSaturday, 17 August 2024
Before a word is spoken, a pause held, we hear the seagulls squawking outside, see the (let’s say brown) walls that remind you of the H-Block protests of the 1980s, witness the pitifully small portions for breakfast. If you were in any doubt that we... Read more... |
The Homecoming, Young Vic Theatre review - Pinter's disturbing masterpiece is given a low-key revivalWednesday, 06 December 2023
As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the theatre. The set, designed by Moi Tran, consists of a sparsely furnished but spacious room, backed by a staircase. It is a place in the past but also anywhere and... Read more... |
Stumped, Hampstead Theatre review - Beckett and Pinter, waiting for DoggoWednesday, 28 June 2023
Much of cricket comprises waiting – you wait on the boundary to hear news of the toss, you wait your turn to bat, you heed the call of your batting partner to wait to see if a run is on, you wait for the rain to stop. A friend once told me that he... Read more... |
Remembering Henry Woolf, Harold Pinter's oldest friendTuesday, 16 November 2021
Henry Woolf's place in theatre history is small but significant, a bit like Woolf was himself. Until his death on November 11, at the age of 91, he was the last survivor of a gang who made friends at Hackney Down grammar school in the 1930s. The... Read more... |
The Dumb Waiter, Old Vic: In Camera review - more in sorrow than in angerSaturday, 10 July 2021
Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter in 1957 (although it wasn't seen in London until 1960) the year before The Birthday Party received its notorious première at the Lyric Hammersmith. When a friend described them both as political plays, about power and... Read more... |
The Dumb Waiter, Hampstead Theatre review - menace without a hint of mirthThursday, 10 December 2020
Add the Hampstead Theatre to the swelling ranks of playhouses opening its doors this month, in this case with a revival well into rehearsal last spring when the first lockdown struck. Re-cast in the interim, Alice Hamilton's 60th-anniversary... Read more... |
Betrayal, Harold Pinter Theatre review - Tom Hiddleston anchors a bold, brooding revivalThursday, 14 March 2019
The grand finale of Jamie Lloyd’s remarkable Pinter at the Pinter season is this starry production of one of the writer’s greatest – and certainly most personal – works, inspired by his extramarital affair with Joan Bakewell. The 1978 play is... Read more... |
Pinter Seven, Harold Pinter Theatre review - elaborations of anxietyThursday, 07 February 2019
It was back to the very beginning for this final instalment of “Pinter at the Pinter”, with its pairing of A Slight Ache and The Dumb Waiter. Both were written at the end of the 1950s, which explained a certain rock’n’roll vibe in the auditorium,... Read more... |
Pinters Five and Six, Harold Pinter Theatre review - superlatively acted esotericaTuesday, 08 January 2019
The scintillating, commercially bold season of Pinter one-acts at the theatre bearing his name plays a particular blinder with Pinter Five (★★★★★), from which I emerged keen to engage with its mystery and breadth of feeling all over again. Pinter... Read more... |
Pinters Three and Four, Harold Pinter Theatre review - double bill boasts double acts to treasureTuesday, 13 November 2018
The West End is specialising in two-parters of late. To Imperium and The Inheritance we can add the latest duo of Harold Pinter one-acts that has opened in time to spread ripples of delight even as the nights draw in. "Delight", you may well ask... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Comfort of StrangersTuesday, 16 October 2018
“There’s a lot of weirdness I didn’t want explained,” Paul Schrader reveals at one point in a new director’s commentary to his 1990 film. He certainly succeeded on that score: with its script by Harold Pinter (adapting Ian McEwan’s elliptical 1981... Read more... |
Pinter at the Pinter, Harold Pinter Theatre review - harrowing and comic short pieces from the masterFriday, 28 September 2018
Ten years after Harold Pinter's death, Jamie Lloyd has set about honouring the 20th century's outstanding British playwright in an ambitious West End season of his shorter works at the theatre which now bears his name. Lloyd, already recognised as a... Read more... |
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