Tag Archives: Royal Shakespeare Company

Harold Pinter at the RSC (Part 2): Reflections on the Archive

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One of the consistent pleasures of research into the production histories of Pinter’s theatrical work for this project has been the opportunity to learn from and work with the archivists and librarians at different institutions that hold rich and varied material connected with Pinter’s expansive career. Of course, as with any research strategy – particularly those engaged in revisiting or reassessing traces of past performances – archival research is not … Continue reading →

Brian Blessed and Pinter’s The Room: a real knock-out

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‘Shouting? Swearing? Threats? Menacing looks? I know what you’re thinking: it sounds just like a Harold Pinter play!’ Brian Blessed, Absolute Pandemonium: My Louder than Life Story (London: Pan Books, 2015), p. 77. As the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies team prepare for the holiday season, what better time to reflect on some of the more surprising finds and amusing anecdotes we’ve come across? In his 2015 autobiography, Absolute Pandemonium, … Continue reading →

The Peartaker: Pinter, Rudkin, and the Midlands

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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 →

Sir Peter Hall, 1930-2017

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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 at the RSC: Beyond The Homecoming

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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 →