En el trabajo II los autores a estudiar :
Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Edward Bond y/o un cuarto autor de libre elección.
Esta vez hay que elegir 3 obras de cualquiera de los anteriores autores y demostrar en qué sentido evolucionan, cambian o se desarrollan sus obras, según en qué fecha se escriben o representan las obras a analizar. Destaca los cambios de planteamiento en el autor según la puesta en escena, la crítica o tu punto de vista personal. Siempre documenta tus afirmaciones.

In this essay I am going to study and analyse the works of Harold Pinter. I am going to focus on perhaps his most famous plays; two of his earlier works, ‘The Birthday Party’ and ‘The Dumb Waiter’ and one of his later plays, ‘Party Time’.

David Hare says of Pinter’s silently subversive plays, ‘The essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play he writes in certain expectation of the unexpected. In sum, this tribute from one writer to another: you never know what the hell's coming next."[1]. Pinter’s dramatic theatrical style known as the comedy of menace coined the term, ‘Pinteresque’. Pinteresque theatre is also often described as the theatre of absurd.

One of the first reviews of ‘The Birthday Party’ from the Cambridge review said, ‘It is a skull-beneath-the-skin play, exposing the horrors and fears that lurk under the calm, dull surface of our everyday existence, behind the frenzied ceremonial drumming of the humdrumí’ This is demonstrated, for example in ‘The Birthday Party’ when the mundane, Petey and Meg discussing their boarder Stanley becomes the impossible, when Goldberg and McCann arrive and a bizarre interrogation takes place, ‘What came first…the chicken or the egg?’.

Similarly in ‘Party Time’ polite conversation, ‘Are you enjoying the Party…Best Party I’ve been to in years’ is juxtaposed with coarse and disturbing prose; ‘We could suffocate every single one of you at a given signal or we could shove a broomstick up each individual arse at another’. Such violent outbursts are ignored as the bourgeois discuss their privileged existence. The review of this play echoed this sentiment; ‘Pinter depicts a world of increasing moral coarseness and spiritual barbarism where even the death of old friends is seen as a minor matter compared to expiration of beloved clubby institutions’.

Pinter is famed for his skill at communication as well as non communication; In his plays he uses pauses and the use of silences so efficiently they become almost poetic;

Fred ( To Charlotte): ‘You married someone. I’ve forgotten who it was.’

Silence.

Charlotte: He died.

Silence.

Pinter also uses absurd language to give meaning to the meaningless, In ‘The Dumb Waiter’ Ben literally becomes bestial when he is angry uttering the speech of animals, ‘Kaw!’ Later in the play, again Pinter shows how tedious and monotonous conversation can drastically change into the underlying violence that lurks underneath suburban society;

Ben: ‘Light the Kettle! It’s common usage!’

Gus: ‘ I think you’ve got it wrong…They say put on the kettle’

…Ben: (grabbing him with two hands by the throat, at arm’s length)

‘THE KETTLE, YOU FOOL’

It is clear that miss-communication also features in Pinter’s plays; Many of Pinter’s characters, while exchanging remarks apparently on a common topic, and using mutually understandable vocabulary, are shown to experience a profound failure to communicate with one another.

I believe that as Pinter’s works progressed, his later plays are more overt in most ways. His earlier plays are certainly subtlety revolutionary yet his later plays are more obviously political. This is shown in the difference of staging in plays; typically in the earlier plays the action takes place in shabby retreats, places that seem to be detached from the real world. In his later work the source of violence that lurks is transferred to the exterior world of totalitarian politics. Therefore there seems a change in focus from personal violence to the focus of public politics. Even ‘Party time’, which is not overtly political, concerns the bourgeois and their seemingly superficial world of tennis clubs, in which, underneath lies the hint of death and danger. The meaningless conversation, ‘ By the pool/You can have a fruit juice on the spot, no extra charge, then they give you this fantastic hot towel’ of the privileged and closed minded is juxtaposed with the exile of the group who speaks confused poetry, ‘ What am I?...Everything stops…It shuts…I sit sucking the dark’.

To conclude, I believe that it is Pinter’s ambiguity that is the main similarity between his style of theatre. It is possible to interpret several readings of his plays; his plays could be interpreted as having sexual or political meanings, for example in ‘The Birthday Party’, the interrogators Goldberg and McCann could be seen as representatives of a totalitarian state come to destroy the enemy, or even agents of a society come to restore Stanley to sexual ‘normality’ fearing he may stray to Oeodpus desires, ie Meg being his Jocasta. Although Pinter remains subtle and vague, his later plays suggest more his strong political views. As the earlier critic suggests Pinter keeps us guessing, continuing to shock us with new ways at looking at society.

Bibliography

Plays By Harold Pinter;

The Birthday Party(1957)

The Dumb Waiter (1957)

Party Time (1991)

Chicago Style: Andrew Wyllie, University of the West of England, "Pinter, Harold" in The Literary Encyclopedia [online database] Profile first published 20/6/2002 [cited 9 Nov. 2005]; available from World Wide Web @ http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.

http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/index.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Pinter

Writing for the
Theatre (A speech made by Harold Pinter at the National Student Drama Festival in
Bristol, 1962) Harold Pinter Plays One.Methuen & Co, 1962

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[1] David Hare in Harold Pinter:A Celebration Faber and Faber 2000 p 21