Piese de Harold Pinter

A Kind of Alaska
Deborah, a middle-aged woman, who has been in a comatose state for thirty years as a result of contracting sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica, awakes with a mind still that of a sixteen-year-old. She must confront a body which seems to have aged without her prior knowledge or consent. Her sister Pauline and Pauline's husband, Hornby, who has been Deborah's devoted doctor over these 3 decades and who may have fallen in love with her, attempt gently to ease her back to her current reality, while withholding some of the more jarring information. Deborah reawakens to a changed world, attempting to take what appear to her to be rather shocking revelations in graceful stride, but ends the play with the ironic observation about her sister and brother-in-law that can only go so far towards accepting the realities that they have allowed her to know.
A Night Out
Albert Stokes, a loner in his late twenties lives with his emotionally suffocating mother and works in an office. After being falsely accused of groping a female at an office party, he wanders the streets until he meets a girl, who invites him to her flat, where he responds to her overtures by angrily demeaning her. Then he returns home to his mother.
A Slight Ache
One of the main themes involves one's insecurity about threats to one's self-identity embodied in the character of the matchseller, of whom one of the other two characters, Edward, is utterly terrified. The theme of growing old is also prevalent: according to Edward, the Matchseller is old, practically stone deaf, and has a glass eye, and the middle-aged Edward and Flora continually reminisce about their youth throughout the play.
Ashes to Ashes Fragment disponibil online
The one-act play opens with Devlin and Rebecca, described as "Both in their forties", talking in what appears to be a home living room on an early summer evening. As the play develops, it becomes clear that Devlin and Rebecca are probably married, although their relationship to each other is not defined explicitly; it must be inferred. Initially, Devlin seems Rebecca's husband or lover, her therapist, and potentially her murderer.Devlin questions Rebecca in forceful ways, and she reveals personal information and dream-like sequences to him. In their first exchange, Rebecca tells of a man who appears to be sexually abusing her and threatening to strangle her.
Trădare (Betrayal)
The action takes place in London and Venice, between 1968 and 1977, in reverse order.The plot exposes different permutations of betrayal and kinds of betrayals occurring over a period of nine years, relating to a seven-year affair involving a married couple, Emma and Robert, and Robert's "close friend" Jerry, who is also married, to a woman named Judith. For five years Jerry and Emma carry on their affair without Robert's knowledge, both cuckolding Robert and betraying Judith, until Emma, without telling Jerry she has done so, admits her infidelity to Robert, although she continues their affair. In 1977, four years after exposing the affair and two years after their subsequent break up Emma meets with Jerry to tell him that her marriage to Robert is over. She then lies to Jerry in telling him that, "last night", she had to reveal the truth to Robert and that he now knows of the affair. The truth however, is that Robert has known about the affair for the past four years.
Celebration
The plot revolves around three couples dining in the most expensive restaurant in town. At one table are sat two brothers, Lambert and Matt, and two sisters, Prue and Julie. Lambert and Julie are married, as are Matt and Prue. They are celebrating Lambert and Julie's wedding anniversary. Seated at another table are Russell and Suki, who later join the other party of diners. The diners' conversations are intersected by the existential ponderings of Richard, the restaurateur (a character based on the London restaurateur Jeremy King), Sonia the maitresse d', and an unnamed Waiter. The dialogue begins as an apparently ordinary celebratory meal for the diners developing into a complex weaving of more sinister themes, including undercurrents of love/hate relationships and incest. The play ends with a mysterious (and 'incomplete') speech from the waiter, which hints at a possible way to escape the pain of everyday life.
Family Voices
Exposes the story of a mother, son, and dead husband and father through a series of letters that the mother and son have written to one another and that each speaks aloud. The son has moved off to the city and is surrounded by odd characters and circumstances. The mother, who apparently never receives her son's letters, questions angrily why her son never responds to her letters, and brings news of his father's death.
Landscape
There is virtually no plot to the play. The focus is on the interaction, or lack of it, between the two characters. The text requires that "Duff refers normally to Beth but does not appear to hear her voice" and "Beth never looks at Duff and does not appear to hear his voice. Both characters are relaxed, in no sense rigid." What plot there is exists only in the stories told by the characters. Beth reminisces to herself of a past romantic episode, whether with Duff or another man is not made clear. Duff talks of more practical matters, and finally has a short outburst of anger, evidently in frustration. Beth continues her romantic reverie as the play ends.
Moonlight
Andy, who is on his deathbed, rehashes his youth, loves, lusts, and betrayals with his wife, while simultaneously his two sons sit in the shadows, speaking enigmatically and cyclically, stepping around and around the fact of their estrangement from their father, rationalizing their love-hate relations with him and the distance that they are unable to close even when their mother attempts to call them home. In counterpoint to their uncomprehending isolation between the extremes of the death before life and the death after is their younger sister, Bridget, who lightly bridges the gaps between youth and age, death and life.
Mountain Language
A short play in four scenes inspired by the oppression of the Kurds in Turkey. As the play begins, we see a group of women waiting all day through snowfall and intimidation by dogs to visit their imprisoned husbands and sons, . Pinter's "political" plays have always explored how individuals and governments exercise power over their fellow man, and here Pinter concentrates on how oppressive regimes have broken the spirits of minorities by banning their language.
Night School
The plot focuses on a man returning home from prison to find his room being rented out to a tenant.
No Man's Land
Hirst is an alcoholic upper-class litterateur who lives in a grand house presumed to be in Hampstead, with Foster and Briggs, respectively his purported amanuensis and man servant (or apparent bodyguard), who may be lovers. Spooner, a "failed, down-at-heel poet" whom Hirst has "picked up in a Hampstead pub" and invited home for a drink, becomes Hirst's house guest for the night; claiming to be a fellow poet, through a contest of at least-partly fantastic reminiscences, he appears to have known Hirst at university and to have shared mutual male and female acquaintances and relationships
Old Times
One interpretation of the play is that all three characters were at one time real living people. Deeley met Anna first and slept with her, then later met Kate at the movies. Kate may or may not have been the friend Anna spoke with at the party. Deeley began dating Kate, and Kate found out that Anna was trying to steal him from her, so she killed Anna. Anna's death upset Deeley (he stared longingly into her empty bed), and Kate then killed him, too. Once he was dead, Kate's mind took over, imagining him hopelessly in love with her. She has lived the past 20 years in a fictional world where Anna and Deeley love her instead of each other. Another interpretation is that Kate and Anna are different personalities of the same person, Kate being the prominent one. Deeley met "Anna" first, and the friend at the party was one of the many friends Anna had that Kate mentions in the first scene. Deeley then met Kate at the movies. Deeley cried in the chair when he discovered Kate's mental issue, and stared sadly at the empty bed before hugging Kate. Kate "killed" Anna for Deeley's sake. 20 years later, she tells him that Anna is returning, and he does all he can to keep Kate from allowing Anna back into her life, ultimately succeeding by the end of the play, when Kate kills Anna again by recalling the first time she killed her.
One for the Road
One for the Road, considered Pinter's "statement about the human rights abuses of totalitarian governments", was inspired by reading on May 19, 1983, Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, a book about torture on Argentina's military dictatorship; later, on January 1984, he got to write it after an argument with two Turkish girls at a family birthday party on the subject of torture.
Party Time
The play is one of the most bitingly critical of his "political" plays. The scene is set up as a typical upper-class gala where Terry is telling Gavin about a wonderful private club and its pool and bar. Liz and Charlotte gossip about love affairs, and later Charlotte catches up with old acquaintaince Fred. All seems so pleasant. But Pinter begins to inject small bits of dialogue that suggest not all is well in the society around them. The streets are deserted, some partygoers are upset at having to stop at a roadblock and show their papers. As the play climaxes, the partygoers are shown as high-ups in a barbaric regime, and Jimmy's fate is revealed. Pinter shows here that the privileged of the world must face some responsibility for repressive regimes, and that we all must work to ensure political freedom worldwide instead of hiding in an upper-class refuge.
Remembrance of Things Past
A screen adaptation of À la recherche du temps perdu, the seven-volume novel by Marcel Proust.
Tea Party
The play "revolves around a family engaged in a business of sanitary engineering."[5] According to an account published in the New Yorker, the play concerns "a middle-aged self-made business man named Sisson" (whom Pinter later renamed Disson), who engages a young secretary, marries a beautiful young second wife, and takes his new brother-in-law into his business–all in the same day";
The Basement
Two men, Law and Stott, compete for possession of and dominance over a "basement flat" and their at-times mutual girlfriend, Jane. During the course of the play, they reverse roles with relation to each other, to the ownership or possession of the flat, and to their relationship with or possession of Jane. The changing furnishings of the room reflect their changing roles and who is in power over whom at various points in time. At first Jane appears to be submissive in relation to the men; but as the action develops, at times she appears to dominate each man and both of them. The character relationships between Stott and Law and the basic plot resemble Pinter's prose fiction works "Kullus" and "The Examination".
The Birthday Party
In the setting of a rundown seaside boarding-house, a little birthday party is turned into a nightmare on the unexpected arrival of two sinister strangers. The play has been classified as a Comedy of menace, characterised by Pinteresque elements such as ambiguous identity, confusions of time and place, and dark political symbolism.
The Caretaker
This play involves interactions between a mentally-challenged man, Aston; a tramp, Davies, whom Aston brings home to his attic room; and Aston's younger brother (Mick), who appears responsible for the house.
The Collection
The plot concerns whether or not Stella and Bill had a one-night stand while away on business in Leeds.
The Dumb Waiter
Two hit-men, Ben and Gus, are waiting in a basement room for their assignment. As the play begins, Ben, the senior member of the team, is reading a newspaper, and Gus, the junior member, is tying his shoes. Gus asks Ben many questions as he gets ready for their job and tries to make tea. They argue over the semantics of "light the kettle" and "put on the kettle". Ben continues reading his paper for most of the time, occasionally reading excerpts of it to Gus. Ben gets increasingly animated, and Gus's questions become more pointed, at times nearly nonsensical.
The Homecoming
The setting is an old house in North London during the summer. After having lived in the United States for several years, Teddy brings his wife, Ruth, home for the first time to meet his working-class family in North London, where he grew up and which she finds more familiar than their arid academic life in America. Much sexual tension occurs as Ruth teases Teddy's brothers and father and the men taunt one another in an Oedipal game of oneupmanship[citation needed], resulting in Ruth's staying behind with Teddy's relatives as "one of the family" and Teddy returning home to America and their three sons without her
The Hothouse
The professionalism and even sanity of the institution's director, Roote, are undermined by his subordinates: the efficient and ambitious Gibbs, the aptly named alcoholic Lush, and Miss Cutts, Roote's calculating and shrewd mistress who is also involved with Gibbs. After the reported murder of one patient and the rape and resulting pregnancy of another, Roote orders Gibbs to find the perpetrator(s), who it appears is Roote himself, and Gibbs supplants his boss as administrator of the corrupt "rest home", whose inmates converge upon the staff, resulting in mayhem.
The Lover
There are three characters in the play: the wife, the husband and the lover. But the lover who comes to call in the afternoons is revealed to be the husband adopting a role. He plays the lover for her: she plays the whore for him. The play contrasts bourgeois domesticity with sexual yearning. As the play goes on the man (first as the lover and then as the husband) expresses a wish to stop the pretend adultery, to the dismay of the woman. Finally, the husband suddenly switches back to the role of the lover.
The Room
Rose have a "one-person dialog" with her husband Bert, who remains silent throughout the whole scene, while serving him a breakfast fry-up. She creates a sense of uneasiness by the way she talks and acts, always moving from one place to another in the room, even while sitting, she sits in a rocking chair and rocks. Her speech is filled with many quick subject changes and asks her husband questions, yet answers them herself. Afterward, Rose's attempt to take out the garbage is interrupted by a young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Sands. She invites the couple in and they tell her they are looking for a flat, and for her landlord, Mr. Kidd, who, in the first production and recent revivals, was played by its original director, Henry Woolf. A blind black man, named Riley, suddenly arrives upstairs to her room, to deliver a mysterious message to Rose from her "father". The play ends violently when Bert, returns, finds Rose stroking Riley's face, delivers a long sexually-suggestive monologue about his experience driving his van while referring to it as if it was a woman, and then beats Riley until he appears lifeless, possibly murdering him, after which Rose cries "Can't see. I can't see. I can't see".
Victoria Station
A radio dialogue between a minicab controller and a driver who is stopped by the side of "a dark park" in Crystal Palace, supposedly waiting further instructions. The controller attempts to instruct the driver to pick up a client from Victoria Station, but the driver declines to move, focusing on his current client. The Controller's mood shifts through various degrees of mystification towards irritation and then possibly compassion masking some more nefarious intention of what to do with this Driver.

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Biografie Harold Pinter 

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Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter s-a nascut la data de 10 octombrie 1930 in Hackney, Marea Britanie.

Harold Pinter este un scriitor, actor şi regizor de teatru evreu englez, unul din cei mai renumiţi dramaturgi ai literaturii engleze contemporane. A scris pentru teatru, emisiuni de radio şi televiziune, precum şi scenarii de filme. Multe din primele sale opere aparţin teatrului absurd. Este laureat al Premiului Nobel pentru literatură pe anul 2005.


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