Harold Pinter Plays Comparison (on Stage (The Dumb Waiter, The Collection, Party Time))
In this paper the author studied is Harold Pinter, and the differences and similarities between “The dumb waiter”, “The Collection” and “Party Time” in their representation on the scene.
Comparing the different divisions of the stage, we see some differences between the three plays:
In “The dumb waiter”, we see that the action occurs in one room, all the play elapses on a single room, that had been, probably the kitchen of a restaurant before. Here, all the scenes give the sensation of monotony and boredom that make the characters try to pass the time, Gus making stupid questions and rare thoughts and Ben reading a paper, always the same paper and all those things mixed create very funny situations which make the audience be interested in the scenes.
In contrast, in “The Collection” we see that the author presents a different space, because he divides the stage in three parts (Harry’s house on the left, James’ flat on the right and a telephone box on a promontory on the centre stage). This division of space makes the audience go into different places where the action happens, and this fact makes the story have alternatives and also more interesting for the audience.
Therefore, in each house there is a dialogue, always between two characters (except on one of the last scenes in Harry’s house ( there are three people)) and these changes make the play more entertaining for the audience.
In “Party Time”, there’s only one scene on the stage, there are no division, but the different conversations between the characters are divided using the lights, the author plays with the lights, when some characters start to talk, the part of the scene which doesn’t take part is in the darkness, and only the people who talk are focused.
That makes the audience think, that there is more space that there is in reality and that the conversations between a concrete number of characters are not listened by the rest of the people on the stage like if there were a big room. It also can be interpreted as a type of metaphor, as the select groups of high-class people, and the customs that that people have, which are not important in real life, and I saw that at the last scene, when Jimmy talks.
Therefore, we can say that the different stages employed by H. Pinter are related with the tendencies of each moment when the plays are written and represented.
Thus we can see how Pinter employs a unique scene in the oldest play “The Dumb Waiter” (1957), later he changes to a division in various parts of the stage in “The Collection”(1961) and in the most modern one “Party Time” in 1991 he benefits of the illumination to change to the different dialogues on the stage.
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