Harold Pinter is one of the more important English playwrights of the second half of the 20th century , since he has written 30 plays.
In the plays of Pinter one observes a clear evolution in his style in time of writing theatre, just as we can assess in his compositions of: “The Dumb Waiter” (1960), “The Collection” (1961) and “Ashes to Ashes” (1996).
Even though Pinter continues faithful to his style with his existentialist vision of the theatre, he introduces changes in his plays. Pinter chases to reflect the problems and the fears of society that is contemporary to him, that continue being the same eventually.
To reflect his vision of reality on stage Pinter chooses a reduced number of actors, that tend always to be two to four and he commend them long dialogues that almost always make reference to past moments in the life of the protagonists.
In “The Dumb Waiter” we see two men too that live with their revolvers waiting for their victim to appear since they are mercenaries, this reflects clearly the social and political tension lived in the era. The play “The Collection” treats of a woman with problems that she invents a history around her non-existent relationship extramatrimonial with someone that she hardly knows. As much as “The Collection” as in “Ashes to Ashes” a woman appears with problems that perceives the reality of manner distorted without being conscious. It is an other clear case of intention of forming and carrying to scene the problems of the society.
The plays of Pinter are characterized by the shortage of a fluid dialogue and above all by the silences and the pauses. His thematic tends be the jealousy and treason.
In “Ashes to Ashes” by means of the silence in the conversations between Rebeca and Delvin he pretends that their characters are bottled in a dialogue since his degree of communication isn’t the ideal.
Pinter tends to relate to the characters with his past trying to show the complexity of the human. He describes the World in their plays from his point of view. Pinter uses a rather vulgar vocabulary.
Their critiques beat from the society to the English policy of the era. We see in his plays a very clear evolution since the silences predominate in nearly all they, we should indicate that in the first plays where it seems that the characters speak only to save the boredom, this wasn’t happening, this is also the case of “The Collection” (1961). These two plays are the pure example of the Theatre of the Absurd.
The final conclusion that we can draw from all this is that, in the career of Harold Pinter have had place two periods: the previous to 80, that it corresponds with plays much more serious, private, with few action and egocentric; and afterwards it is the subsequent era to 80, that it consists in a sudden change as private to the public, as well as of the political aspects, and the situation of some plays that it seem no longer so dramatic, but are resembled a little what is comedy. Finally, the most influential aspect is the fact of speaking, mentioning, trying about topics not only personal but also about topics related with the society.
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