2^nd Paper: The Harold Pinter’s uniformity

Harold Pinter wrote among other plays The Dumb Waiter (1957), Party Time (1991) and Ashes to Ashes (1996).  These plays were written throughout a period of more or less thirty years during which an evolution may be expected. However, these plays have many aspects in common. It is as if the playwright had sought to create the same uniformity and a similar stile in all his plays. Let us explain these common aspects in details .

The first aspect in these three plays is they are not very long, that is to say, they are brief. All of them are about forty pages. Secondly all his plays live in closed spaces such as a room. In the play The Dumb Waiter the characters are in a “basement room”, (page 129), in Party Time the action occurs in “a room of  Gavin’s flat” (page 281) and in Ashes to Ashes everything takes place in “a ground-floor room” (page 393.)

 The third aspect common to Pinter’s plays that draws our attention is the small number of characters, thus, in The Dumb Waiter there are two, Ben and Gus, in Party Time there are nine and in Ashes to Ashes we also find two, Rebecca and Devlin.

Another aspect worth noting is the fact that characters maintain repeatedly conversations (1) and, sometimes without sense (2), for instance, in The Dumb Waiter, Ben and Gus, speak about making tea (pages 144 and 157) (1), in Party Time while other characters are talking Dusty asked: “Did you hear what’s happened to Jimmy? What’s happened to Jimmy? however, nobody answered her and they went on talking, (pages 284 and 296) (1). A third example is when Dusty and Terry are speaking about boating and one of them says: “I love boats, I love boating” (…) “I love cooking on boats” (page 295) (2). And also all of his plays have one principal character that without he or she, we don’t understand his plays. For example, in Party time, Jimmy.

The language used by the playwright is also important to be mentioned. Characters use an informal, colloquial style. There are contractions and swearwords (1), and sometimes the dialogue among them is almost non-existent (2); it shows us in an implied manner that the characters are common people, in other words, people that do not belong to the highest society, people that are of the middle class, thus, in Party Time, Liz says: “ But that bitch had her legs all over him” (page 288) (1) and in Ashes to Ashes, Rebecca says: “ I think you’re a fuckpig” (page 398) (1), in Ashes to Ashes (pages 397 and 398) (2), Party Time page 305 (2).

Pinter’s stage directions are very short but very concrete and concise. Most of them are about space and time, and we also find some others, such as the age that the characters are, whereas almost did not use to explain the actions that the characters do, in other words, the actions that the characters must perform. (The Dumb Waiter page 147, in Party Time pages 281 and 288, in Ashes to Ashes pages 393 and 419). Another stage direction is that in the course of actions, while the characters are speaking there is a pause or silence, (in Party Time pages 296 and 305, in Ashes to Ashes pages 399 and 407), with this Pinter shows us the silence or pause that the characters must keep during the action.

Another aspect in common is that in his play there are “two worlds” such as in Party Time. In it there is one world where the characters are, they want not to see the reality and another that shows the “society”.

And finally the last aspect common to Pinter’s plays is the ending of his plays, they are open which is as if the playwright wanted us to imagine the end, (in The Dumb Waiter page 165, Party Time 314, In Ashes to Ashes page 433).

As a conclusion, we can affirm that Harold Pinter’s plays maintain and have a certain uniformity. We can also state that the playwright follows more or less the same style. Nevertheless, there is a change or a certain evolution in his plays which has to do with the topics he chooses for his plays.