Christmas Eve saw the death of one of Britain’s greatest ever playwrights. Harold Pinter, famous of his stark and unsettling plays, eventually lost his six-year battle with cancer. He was 78.

Born in Hackney in 1930, Pinter was brought up in a fairly modest middle-class family. A child during the War, Pinter was evacuated from London and sent to live in Cornwall when he was just ten years old. This turbulence affected Harold greatly, nearly 60 years later his biographer, Michael Billington, described how “[Harold's] prime memories of evacuation today are of loneliness, bewilderment, separation and loss: themes that are in all his works”.

An extremely bright student, Pinter discovered a passion and an aptitude for acting whilst a pupil at Hackney Downs Grammar School. A scholarship to RADA followed but Harold disliked their formulaic approach to drama and dropped out after only two terms. A brief stint in Dick Whittington and his Cat> at Chesterfield and a ‘tedious’ six months spent at the Central School for Speech and Drama were all 1951 could offer him. It wasn’t until the following year, when he toured Ireland with Anew McMaster’s theatre company, that his professional career really began to take off. Appearing in a smattering of repertory productions, Pinter began working for the King’s Theatre, Hammersmith in 1953 and there he began to seriously think about his writing career.

Initially writing poetry and prose, Pinter’s first major play was performed in 1957. The Room was staged as a student production at the University of Bristol by his friend Henry Woolf. His second full-length play, The Birthday Party, was staged at the Lyric in Hammersmith the same year and, despite some rave reviews, was a commercial disaster and was forced to close early. In fact, one reviewer from The Sunday Times, Harold Hobson, was so impressed by the play that he wrote this after going to see it:

“At the moment I write these lines it is uncertain even whether the play will still be in the bill by the time they appear, though it is probable it will soon be seen elsewhere. Deliberately, I am willing to risk whatever reputation I have as a judge of plays by saying that The Birthday Party is not a Fourth, not even a Second, but a First; and that Pinter, on the evidence of his work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.… Mr Pinter and The Birthday Party, despite their experiences last week, will be heard of again. Make a note of their names.”

The Birthday Party remains one of Pinter’s most successful and best-loved plays. Its menacing tension, the ambivalent characters and the sparse, pause-ridden dialogue came to characterise Pinter’s unique style.

Much-copied, Pinter’s caustic plays were fresh and exciting to theatre audiences grown cold and weary to the post-war frivolities popular at the time. Together with playwrights like John Osbourne, artists from Pinter’s generation were banded together as the Angry Young Men. A group of radical young dramatists, the AYM revolutionised theatre in the late 50s and early 60s and helped to kick-start the cultural shake-up that would dominate the following decade.

A towering arts figure in the swinging sixties, Pinter never really dallied with the limelight and kept his personal life firmly from the tabloids. A clandestine affair with journalist Joan Bakewell brought his first marriage to an end and, in 1980, he married historian Lady Antonia Fraser who had divorced from her husband three years previously. They remained happily married until Pinter’s death last week.

An outspoken supporter of left-wing politics, Pinter famously opposed the Bush Administration and the subsequent War on Terror. After penning his last play, Celebration, in 2000, Pinter devoted the remainder of his life to composing shorter pieces of prose, political speeches and poetry.

In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

With no further ado, let’s take a look at the great man in action. Below are a few clips from his plays and a recent interview for Newsnight Review…

(Be warned, Pinter’s complex and and interrogative drama is not suitable for children or the feint of heart.)

Tagged as: angry young men, drama, harold pinter, the birthday party, the caretaker, the room

Leave a Response

Name ( required )

Email ( required )

Website