Harold
Pinter, “Party
Time”, a play in one act, Faber and Faber, 1991, London.
“Party Time” is a play that is
set in a smart and fashionable London.
All of the actions
happen in a large room where Gavin is throwing a party.
Gavin’s guests,
Terry, Dusty, Melissa, Liz, Charlotte, Fred and Douglas belong to
a health club where “people don’t do
vulgar and sordid and offensive things” (pag.310: Terry) and which “…is inspired by a moral sense, a moral
awareness,….rigorous, fundamental, constant” (pag.311: Melissa).
Another character is Jimmy
who is Dusty’s brother.
In the room there are
only two doors. One half open which is never used and another in a dim light.
The closed place where
the play happens is a characteristic aspect of Harold Pinter’s plays, who,
through the dialogues between the characters in the party, shows us a sector of
the upper classes, the bourgeois society (pag.283:
Terry: “the place has got real class”;
pag.294: Melissa: “No, if I still look
all right, it’s probably because I’ve just joined this new club…”; pag.295:
Gavin: “I’m a golfer. I play gof”;
pag.295: Terry: “He doesn’t do anything
else. He plays golf”; pag.299: Liz: “I
love the fact that people are so well dressed”).
The author also shows us
not only the interests and values
that this sector considers as correct things but also the attitudes of indifference to the outside world when Melissa
arrives and tells Gavin, Terry and Dusty that in the town there’s a violent
disorder which is being savagely suppressed ( pag.286: “there’s not a soul
in sight, apart from some…soldiers….a roadblock…it really was a trifle….”)and
they continue talking about their own interests (pag.287: Terry: “What are you drinking?”; Melissa: “What a lovely party”).
The “half open door” is also another characteristic aspect in the plays of Harold Pinter. It’s a way how he allows that the reality of the outside world went in and interfered in the people. It is like the elevator or the envelope under the door in “The Dumb Waiter”.
The characters are that
bourgeois society that is intolerant:
-pag.283: Terry: “…they don’t let
any old spare bugger in there, why should they?”.
-pag.290: when Liz and Charlotte talk, in a disdainful way, about
another girl: “nymphomaniac slut”.
-pag292: when Fred and Douglas talk about the country: “But we want that peace to be cast iron. No
leaks, No draughts. Tight as a drum”.
-pag296: when Dusty say “Does
anyone know what’s happened to my brother Jimmy?” and Terry savagely
answers “Perhaps she’s deaf…it’s not up
for discussion…”.
-pag310: Terry: “People….And if
they do we kick them in the balls and chuck them down the stairs with no
trouble at all”.
The men in the play are sexit:
-Terry: pag.294: “And if you’re not a good girl I’ll spank
you”; pag297: “I’m going to have to
give her a real talking to when I get her home”.
-Douglas: pag.309: “And when I got back from my travelling, I
would find….And that’s why we’re still together”.
-Fred: pag.309: when
he applauds these words of Douglas.
However, Jimmy, who, with a monologue
talks at the end of the play, isn’t an intolerant, sexist, aggressive man.
Because of what, I think, he is out whatever conversation. He says: “the dark is in my mouth and I suck it. It’s
the only thing I have. It’s mine. It’s my own. I suck it.”
Opinion
I think that the club
to which the characters belong is a metaphor. I think that it means the
“tight” country that they would like it was (pag.292) and they are the intolerant
citizens in it (that bourgeois society)
The dark about
which Jimmy talks, I think, that is the solitude in which he is despite
he is next a group of people. For these people the own interests are more important
than the outside world.
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