The following dialogue explores the recent production of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, which is playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End from 9 January to 14 April 2018. The production is directed by Ian Rickson and stars Peter Wight as Petey, Zoë Wannamaker as Meg, Toby Jones as Stanley, Pearl Mackie as Lulu, Stephen Mangan as Goldberg and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as McCann. Set design is by … Continue reading →
This is the shine, the powder and blood, and here am I, Straddled, exile always in one Whitbread Ale town, Or such. Pinter, New Year in the Midlands (1950) ‘[I]n this gaudy, bawd-filled Midlands pub one even wonders if there is a glimpse of Pinter himself in “the clamping/ Red shirted boy ragefull, thudding his cage.”’ Billington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (1996) Ahead of the project’s first … Continue reading →
Elkan Presman’s 1958 review of the original production of The Birthday Party in the Oxford University student newspaper Cherwell is one of the very earliest Pinter reviews to have been published, and has not been reproduced in its entirity since. A striking aspect of the review is the impression that it gives the reader of how (some of) its original audience might have registered the play – functioning through “a … Continue reading →
The Pinter: Histories and Legacies team were saddened to learn earlier this week of the death of Sir Peter Hall. Without any doubt, Hall was the most important figure in post-war twentieth-century British theatre, a director and visionary whose own history is a map of that period, and whose legacies are interwoven into the fabric of the British cultural landscape. He modernised the British theatre, elevated the role and artistry … Continue reading →
Harold Pinter’s affiliation with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), the impact of the works he produced there, and his artistic relationship with its founding director Peter Hall are typically discussed in relation to early seminal productions such as The Collection (1962), The Homecoming (1965) or Old Times (1971). These mainstage productions at the Aldwych Theatre – the RSC’s first London base from 1961 to 1983 – have become canonical both … Continue reading →
When looking for DVD or Blu-ray copies of Harold Pinter’s work on screen, a simple rule generally applies – if it was made for television it is unlikely to have been commercially released, whereas if it was a film it almost certainly has (but it might well now be deleted). This article is intended to serve as a simple guide to what has been made available and (where it applies) … Continue reading →
