THE 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 An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Mark Taylor-Batty, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Mark Taylor-Batty has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents 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.