Theatrical lecture Module
“ASHES TO ASHES”
by Harold Pinter
Ashes
to ashes was
written by Harold Printer in 1996. The first time that this play was presented
was at the Ambassadors Theatre , in
There are two characters
in this play; Devlin and Rebecca. Both of them are in their forties as is pointed
out in the play’s beginning. It seems that they are friends ,
but it is really confusing on occasions. I think there is a big relation
between both characters. I support this idea based on what I have read in the
play. For example on page 400 Devlin calls Rebecca “My darling” Rebecca does not accept that he calls her “darling”. This situation is repeated on
other occasions in the play and on page 418 Devlin calls Rebecca “sweetheart”. Apparently the dialogs of
the play are characteristic of two good friends. Another idea supporting the
fact that they are very good friends is that they talk about issues that only
good friends talk about ( we can see that during the
play ) . I think there is on important relationship between Devlin and Rebecca.
During the play Rebecca
is telling Devlin about her love. A man who it seems is a tourist guide. Rebecca
says at the beginning of the play that this man ordered her to “Kiss my fist “. I think it is aggression , but she admits that she has kissed his fist. It
is very confusing. After, she told Devlin that she had ordered that man to put
his hand “round my throat“ she thinks that he adores her, but Devlin does not believe
it, he thinks that it is aggression. Rebecca told Devlin about this man, about
how he is a tourist guide and how she met him (the moment of the description of
this moment is on page 416). Rebecca and Devlin share some characteristics.
There is a moment that Devlin calls Rebecca “sweetheart“. Then Rebecca thought that she remembered someone
calling her “sweetheart”. She
remembers she had a dream in which she was in a city, she saw the man that she
loves taking babies to their mothers. And they were carried in trains. Their
mothers cried. Rebecca told Devlin the situation as if she was seeing it. After
she talks there was an echo. Finally she says that they arrived at that place
(where it is at the moment) and she was talking with a woman about a baby but
Rebecca does not have a baby.
The space in which the
play is performed is a single room, in a house in the country in summer. The
time is 1996 because Harold Pinter shows on the first pages “Time: Now“ (
the play was written in 1996 ). During the play time jumps to
the past, (when Rebecca remembers the dream).
In
this play, as in some of Harold Pinter’s plays. There are a lot of pauses. These pauses
characterize Harold Pinter’s plays. They slow down the action making things confusing .
Many social and politic
aspects are presented, that we can recognize Hitler’s and Nazism’s ages are
well described by Rebecca when she describes her dream.
To conclude I am going
to say that this play is very interesting because it shows another way how Nazism
affects people. In this case baby’s mothers when Nazis take them (the babies).