HAROLD PINTER   (1930 - 2008)


Harold Pinter
   Nationality:
British
   Literary Agent: *:
   Email:
n/a
   Website:

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Plays by Harold Pinter

HAROLD PINTER
Applicant
1st Produced:
BBC Third Programme
1964
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Radio Sketch
-
Parts:
Male
6
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
excerpt from the Hothouse
Synopsis:
Applying for a job, a young man is given a bizarre psychological test which leaves him gasping, blushing and rolling on the floor in shock.
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HAROLD PINTER
Ashes To Ashes
1st Produced:
1996
Company:
-
1st Published:
Faber & Faber, London, 1996
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Short Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
This dark, elegiac play, studded with brutally and swaggeringly funny jokes is one of Pinter's most haunting works' Daily Telegraph
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HAROLD PINTER
Basement, The
1st Produced:
Off Broadway, New York
1968
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Tea Party & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1967
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Televised 1967
Synopsis:
The play, in the words of Edith Oliver, is "about a fussy, spinsterish bachelor whose carefully furnished basement flat is invaded late one night by his former roommate with a young girl in tow. Host is effusive in his welcome to former roommate, that is. Girl and former roommate strip naked and get into bed, as host, terribly rattled, continues to chatter. (The chatter is absolutely fine.) The intruders move in permanently, and soon the host's old pictures and bits of sculpture are replaced by a huge, bright, modern abstract. And there are other innovations. As the action progresses, the roles of lover and leftover switch back and forth, and the girl, like the old bum in The Caretaker, tries to set the men against each other and succeeds. There are scenes at a beach, in a cafe, and at a bogus deathbed, and there is a duel, which is fought on a dark stage with lighted broken bottles." In the end we are, it seems, back where we started. But not quite. We have seen, if only for a moment, the rather pathetic, tragic consequences
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HAROLD PINTER
Betrayal
1st Produced:
London
1978
Company:
-
1st Published:
Eyre Methuen, London, 1978
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Drama 9 scenes
-
Parts:
Male
3
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
The play begins in the present, with the meeting of Emma and Jerry, whose adulterous affair of seven years ended two years earlier. Emma's marriage to Robert, Jerry's best friend, is now breaking up, and she needs someone to talk to. Their reminiscences reveal that Robert knew of their affair all along and, to Jerry's dismay, regarded it with total nonchalance. Thereafter, in a series of contiguous scenes, the play moves backward in time, from the end of the Emma-Jerry affair to its beginning, throwing into relief the little lies and oblique remarks which, in this timereverse, reveal more than direct statements, or overt actions, ever could.
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HAROLD PINTER
Birthday Party, The
1st Produced:
Arts Theatre, Cambridge
1958
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Birthday Party & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1960
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
4
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Goldberg and McCann arrive at a seaside boarding house where Meg and Petey live with their guest Stanley. They inquire about Stanley: we soon find out that McCann and Goldberg have a job to do. Learning it is his birthday they give Stanley a party at which Stanley is verbally bludgeoned into submission. The next day Stanley is removed. It is the collective impact of the dialogue which welds the seemingly inexplicable actions of Goldberg and McCann into a menacing whole.
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HAROLD PINTER
Black And White, The
1st Produced:
Lyric Opera House, London
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Revue Sketches
Show
Parts:
Male
-
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in One to Another
Synopsis:
Two old buddies, with little to do and nowhere to go, make small talk over soup in a crowded milk bar.
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HAROLD PINTER
Caretaker, The
1st Produced:
Arts Theatre Club, London
1960
Company:
-
1st Published:
Eyre Methuen, London, 1960
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Comedy/Drama
Comedy
Parts:
Male
3
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
The New York Times comments: "An old bum receives shelter in a cluttered room of an abandoned house. His samaritan is a gentle young man whose kindness is so casual that he seems almost indifferent. Dirty, tattered, unkempt, itching and scratching, the tramp is by turns wheedling, truculent and full of bravado. . .He speaks the proud lingo of those who have untold resources awaiting them at near-by havens. He pronounces his meager phrases with the exaggerated precision of one unaccustomed to being heeded. He flails a fist into a palm or into the air with the belligerence of a fighter no one will ever corner. He associates himself with fastidious practices like soap as if they were his daily habit. He is very funny-at first. But the laughter shades increasingly into pity. Like a cornered animal, he cannot believe that anyone means to be kind to him. . .He hates foreigners. He trusts no one, and fears everyone. He alienates the two brothers who separately have offered him a job as caretaker of the premises
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HAROLD PINTER
Celebration
1st Produced:
2000
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
5
Female
4
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
All the action takes place in a swish London restaurant where two coarse-grained strategy consultants are dining with their respective wives. At an adjacent table a banker and his wife banter over his recently discovered affair. But while Pinter gets a lot of laughs out of these gold-plated philistines, he also suggests they are displaced people. Shorn of any inherited values, they live in an eternal present of sex, food and conspicuous consumption. - Michael Billington, Guardian
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HAROLD PINTER
Collection, The
1st Produced:
London
1962
Company:
-
1st Published:
Samuel French, London, 1962
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
3
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Televised 1961
Synopsis:
As George Oppenheimer describes "The action of THE COLLECTION takes place on a divided stage, shared by a house in London's Belgravia and a flat in Chelsea. In the house live Harry, an older man, and Bill, a young dress designer. One night the life of Harry and Bill is distorted by an anonymous phone call, followed by a visit from a young man who refuses to leave his name. The visitor turns out to be James, owner of the flat where he lives with his wife, Stella, a decorative model, who has confessed to her husband that she had a one-night affair with Bill. James is obsessed with a desire to meet the man who had cuckolded him and when he does, a weird attraction-repulsion arise between the two young men. Harry discovers what is going on and in the end casts doubt on whether the affair ever took place and thereby reestablishes an uneasy status quo. All this is done with subtlety and good taste and affords a stimulating glimpse into the shadow abyss that lies between the true and the false, illusion and reality.
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HAROLD PINTER
Dialogue For Three
1st Produced:
BBC Third Programme
1964
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Stand" Newcastle vol 6, no 3, 1963
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Radio Sketch
-
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Top of Page
HAROLD PINTER
Dumb Waiter, The
1st Produced:
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Birthday Party & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1960
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in German, Frankfurt 1959
Synopsis:
As the New York World-Telegram & Sun describes: "In the basement of a long-abandoned restaurant, two hired killers nervously await their next assignment. Barred from daylight and living public contact by the nature of their work, they expend their waiting time in bickering. So eerie is the situation that everything becomes comic, or grotesque, or both. Ben re-reading a newspaper and exclaiming in disbelief over the news items, Gus fussing with an offstage stove and offstage plumbing. Ben bludgeoning Gus into silence if he as much as mentions their work. Gus worrying that someone had slept in his bed. So then the ancient dumbwaiter comes to life, the suspense becomes almost unbearable-that expertly has Pinter put the nerves of his characters and audience on edge."
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HAROLD PINTER
Dwarfs, The
1st Produced:
New Arts Theatre, London
1963
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "A Slight Ache & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1961
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
3
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Broadcast 1960
Synopsis:
The play is concerned with three young men, Len, Pete and Mark, and the scene of action shifts back and forth between Len's house and Mark's. Sometimes all three come together, sometimes only two, and often Len is on stage alone. There are conversations and soliloquies filled with the brilliant convolutions of thought, the sudden flashes of truth which distinguish Pinter's unique style, with the mood ranging from calm introspection to explosive outpouring. Much of what is said hints at deeper thoughts left unspoken, and the sense of horror and alienation which often emerges is a searing indictment of our life and times. We meet, we talk, we tear at each other, but our insularity is seldom penetrated. We are together but alone, as though life were a mirror which reflects only our own image. But there is humor too, again distinctively Pinteresque in its startling swings from the direct to the illusive.
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HAROLD PINTER
Examination, The
1st Produced:
London
1978
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Short Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
short prose piece
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HAROLD PINTER
Family Voices
1st Produced:
1981
Company:
Platform Performance by the NT
1st Published:
Next Editions, 1981
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
broadcast 1981, in Other Places
Synopsis:
a series of parallel monologues between a mother and son in the form of letters probably written but never mailed, in which the facade of a happy family gradually disintegrates into a cauldron of recrimination.
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HAROLD PINTER
Heat Of The Day, The
1st Produced:
Granada TV
1989
Company:
-
1st Published:
Faber & Faber, London, 1989
ISBN
-
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Genre:
T.V. Play
-
Parts:
Male
9
Female
9
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
novel by Elizabeth Bowen
Synopsis:
London is at war, couple are in love but a mysterious stranger intervenes.
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HAROLD PINTER
Homecoming, The
1st Produced:
Cardiff
1965
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
5
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Cardiff March 26, London June 3
Synopsis:
Eldest son returns to find his repeatability has made him a misfit amongst the squalor and amorality.
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HAROLD PINTER
Hothouse, The
1st Produced:
London
1980
Company:
-
1st Published:
Eyre Methuen, London, 1980
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Black Comedy
Comedy
Parts:
Male
6
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
written 1958
Synopsis:
The scene is a government institution, possibly mental or medical and presumably penal, where the inmates are kept behind locked gates and are referred to by number rather than name. In charge is Roote, a pompous ex-colonel who is surely as psychologically disturbed as his charges, and who is abetted by two main lackeys: the quietly sinister Gibbs and a seedy alcoholic appropriately named Lush. There is also the sexy Miss Cutts, whose favors appear to be shared by the various staff members. Among the matters at issue are the disturbing fact that one of the patients has given birth to a baby, though no one has filed an official report about having had sex with her and also the need for Roote to pull himself together to address the understaff Christmas party. In the final essence these bureaucratic crises hardly matter, however, as the play ends as ominously as it began, with a burst of lethal violence which leaves only one survivor to search for answers and, perhaps, to accept responsibility for the chaos which ensues.
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HAROLD PINTER
Interview
1st Produced:
BBC Third Programme
1964
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Plays 3" Faber, London, 1991
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Radio Sketch
-
Parts:
Male
2
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
During an interview, the proprietor of a pornographic book store confides that the "security police" have dossiers on all his customers-and so does he. After all, they're a pack of Communists.
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HAROLD PINTER
Kind Of Alaska, A
1st Produced:
London
1982
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Drama
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in Other Places
Synopsis:
a masterly study of a middle-aged woman waking up after 30 years passed in a coma induced by sleeping sickness. In her mind she is still 16, and her attempts to fathom the changed world into which she re-emerges is not only poignant and emotionally charged but, in the end, devastatingly brilliant theatre as well.
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HAROLD PINTER
Landscape
1st Produced:
1969
Company:
-
1st Published:
Pendragon Press, 1968
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Broadcast 1968
Synopsis:
a middle aged couple, housekeeper and chauffeur sit in the huge bare kitchen of a country house pursuing their own thoughts aloud in a ghastly semblance of conversation.
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HAROLD PINTER
Last To Go
1st Produced:
Apollo Theatre, London
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "A Slight Ache & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1961
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Revue Sketches
Show
Parts:
Male
2
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in Pieces of Eight
Synopsis:
A coffee stall. The attendant and an old newspaper seller chat idly about a variety of pointless topics which probably mean little to either of them.
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HAROLD PINTER
Lover, The
1st Produced:
Arts Theatre Club, London
1963
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "The Collection & The Lover" Methuen, London, 1963
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Televised 1963
Synopsis:
As the New York Herald-Tribune outlines "A husband goes to his office politely asking if his wife's lover will be coming today. She murmurs 'Mmmm,' and suggest he not return before six. In order not to return before six he will no doubt visit a prostitute. A competition is glossily established. When the lover does come, he is the husband, which is not surprising. The kind of sex-play follows that suggests this is the necessary titillation, and the necessary release of hostility, between a man who means to be master of the house and a wife who means to be both wife and mistress, whatever the house may be. But there is a flaw in the accommodation. The lover is weary of his mistress; she is no longer particularly appetizing. By the time he returns, as husband, in the evening, his wife is still disturbed by the news. The performance of the afternoon has begun to carry over into the reality (or pretense) of the evening. Suddenly the husband is not quite husband, diffident over his drink.
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HAROLD PINTER
Mac—a Memoir
1st Produced:
-
1969
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Plays 3" Faber, London, 1991
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Monologue
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
1
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Top of Page
HAROLD PINTER
Monologue
1st Produced:
London
1973
Company:
-
1st Published:
Covent Garden Press, 1973
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Televised 1973
Synopsis:
Woolf, in a seedy room, talks to the empty chair in which he is seated.
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HAROLD PINTER
Moonlight
1st Produced:
1993
Company:
-
1st Published:
Faber & Faber, London, 1993
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
4
Female
2
Parts Other:
1g
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
In a dark space you can't measure, a once visceral father lies on his deathbed, looking over his life, his youth, loves, lusts and betrayals of his wife. At the same time, in another bedroom, somewhere in the same space, the man's two sons intellectually, clinically and conspiratorially speak of their relationship with their father. Side-stepping their estrangement from him, they rationalize their love-hate relationship with him and defend the distance they are incapable of closing, even when their mother calls them home. In contrast to these closed sons, is the man's daughter, the baby sister, who refuses the dourness and bridges the space between the light and dark, youth and age, and death and life.
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HAROLD PINTER
Mountain Language
1st Produced:
London
1988
Company:
-
1st Published:
Faber & Faber, London, 1988
ISBN
-
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Genre:
4 brief scenes
One Act
Parts:
Male
5
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Furthering the theme of political consciousness expressed so forcefully and eloquently in his earlier play ONE FOR THE ROAD, the author's present play takes place in an anonymous country where individual liberties have been forfeited to the state. Set in a prison where the inmates are forbidden to speak their own language, the play is comprised of four terse, arresting scenes which make masterful use of nuance and subtle understatement (with sudden bursts of violence) to create an overwhelming sense of terror and shocking futility. In one scene uniformed officers taunt and belittle the women who have come to visit their men, who are political prisoners; in another a mother and son are allowed to speak only in "the language of the capital," which they do not know; in the third scene a young woman accidentally sees a guard holding a limp, tortured man whom she knows to be her husband; and, in the final scene the old woman reunited with her bloody, trembling son and, though told she may now speak.
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HAROLD PINTER
New World Order, The
1st Produced:
1991
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Granata" No 37, 1991
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
Ten Min
Parts:
Male
3
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Two men stand above a third-tied and blindfolded-talking to each other, but addressing the third man. The insinuations and threats about what will become of-and what will be done to-this third man, represent the forces in today's world which stifle freedom in its many forms. The fear and uncertainty conveyed by this short piece powerfully reminds us that the evils of the world will always try to conquer us if we don't heed the warnings.
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HAROLD PINTER
Night
1st Produced:
1969
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Landscape & Silence" Methuen, London, 1969
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Short dialogue
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Originally presented as one of eight plays under the title "We Who Are About To. . ." at the Hampstead Theatre Club on February 6th 1969, which was subsequently presented as "Mixed Doubles" at the Comedy Theatre, London on April 9th 1969
Synopsis:
long married couple cast their minds back to their first meeting.
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HAROLD PINTER
Night Out, A
1st Produced:
Dublin
1961
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "A Slight Ache & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1961
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
10
Female
5
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
broadcast 1960; part of triple bill "Counterpoint"
Synopsis:
Living at home with his widowed, domineering mother, Albert is a meek, hen-pecked fellow for whom the invitation to an office party is a rare and welcome chance for a bit of fun. With his mother's exhortations to behave himself ringing in his ears (and his dinner in the oven lest he lose his nerve and turn back home), Albert meets his friends and goes off to the party. Once there, he struggles to overcome his shyness and join in the small talk, but when he is falsely accused of pinching a girl the resulting furor is more than he can cope with. Slinking home he is confronted with maternal diatribe which is, for poor Albert, the last straw. In a rage he rushes back into the London night and, picking up a girl at a coffee stand, goes with her to her room. But when they are alone the girl rambles on incessantly about what a lady she really is and Albert, perhaps sensing in her the personification of all the prattling women in the world, turns on her vindictively and annihilates her seamy and pathetic pretensions.
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HAROLD PINTER
Night School
1st Produced:
Associated Rediffussion
1960
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Tea Party & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1967
ISBN
-
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Genre:
T.V. Play
-
Parts:
Male
3
Female
3
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
man leaves jail and returns home to find his two aunts have let his room.
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HAROLD PINTER
No Man's Land
1st Produced:
London
1975
Company:
-
1st Published:
Eyre Methuen, London, 1975
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
4
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Involves the confrontation of two aging writers, one a success, one not. They meet at the comfortable flat of the successful author for a nightcap, even though it is not clearly apparent that they are previously acquainted, and the failed, seedy writer is soon forced to acknowledge that he now works as an attendant in a pub. The rich author, Hirst, having drunk too much, is put to bed by the two rather sinister servant-bodyguards who attend him, and his guest, Spooner, is left alone-with the door locked. In the morning the mood changes. Spooner is served a lavish breakfast, and then a rejuvenated Hirst bursts in, greeting Spooner as though he were a dear old school chum, and the sharer of many past escapades. Spooner plays along, and there is the sudden hope that he will be able to secure their relationship to his personal benefit. But Hirst can only acknowledge the cold around him, and order the curtains drawn, before slipping irretrievably into that place which never changes-the icy, silent no man's land.
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HAROLD PINTER
Old Times
1st Produced:
Oxford Playhouse
1971
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
1
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
The scene is a fashionably remodeled farmhouse in the countryside somewhere beyond London, where a prosperous and urbane couple are entertaining the wife's former roommate and friend whom they have not seen for twenty years. At first the husband and wife banter, then the friend joins them and a flood of intertwining memories ensues. The action shifts back and forth in time, as recollection of what did-or, perhaps, did not-happen are pondered and, as the tension builds, we are aware that the husband and the friend have become locked in a duel for the wife's very soul. Reveries and ambiguities abound, hinting at much more than is said, and forming together into a surprising entity which challenges the heart and mind and will linger on enticingly in the memory.
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HAROLD PINTER
One For The Road
1st Produced:
London
1984
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
1b
Notes:
part of Other Places
Synopsis:
powerful statement about the abuse of human rights by totalitarian governments, finds an unctuous and "civilized" interrogator humiliating the doomed members of a family who have become enemies of the state.
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HAROLD PINTER
One To Another
1st Produced:
London
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
Samuel French, London, 1960
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
Sketches in
Sketch
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
written with N. F. Simpson And John Mortimer
Synopsis:
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HAROLD PINTER
Other Places
1st Produced:
London
1982
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
3 * 1 Act Plays
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Family Voices; Victoria Station; A Kind of Alaska
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HAROLD PINTER
Party Time
1st Produced:
1991
Company:
-
1st Published:
Faber & Faber, London, 1991
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
5
Female
4
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
A party in an elegant flat. Below, in the streets, a military presence. The party goes on.
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HAROLD PINTER
Pieces Of Eight
1st Produced:
London
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "A Slight Ache & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1961
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
Sketches in
Sketch
Parts:
Male
3
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Last To Go; Request Stop; Special Offer
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HAROLD PINTER
Precisely
1st Produced:
London
1983
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "The Big One" Methuen, London, 1984
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
Sketch
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
in anti-nuclear weapons show, how many dead would be acceptable ?
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HAROLD PINTER
Rememberance Of Things Past
1st Produced:
2000
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Adaptation
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
cast of 30
Notes:
The novels of Marcel Proust adapted by Di Trevis from the screenplay by Harold Pinter.
Synopsis:
Proust's recollection of his childhood in the French countryside of the 1870's, his move to Paris and the story that unfolds as France goes into the first world war.
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HAROLD PINTER
Request Stop
1st Produced:
Apollo Theatre, London
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "A Slight Ache & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1961
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
Revue Sketches
Show
Parts:
Male
2
Female
3
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in Pieces of Eight
Synopsis:
A brief monologue by a "lady" waiting in a bus queue. Is it her fault if the men she asked directions of should race to the wrong conclusions?
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HAROLD PINTER
Room, The
1st Produced:
Bristol
1957
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Birthday Party & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1960
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
4
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
While her taciturn husband remains engrossed in his magazine, Rose bustles about getting breakfast. As she works she carries on a monologue touching on the weather, the coziness of their cramped quarters, and the mysterious tenant who occupies a damp, windowless room in the basement. The aged landlord, Mr. Kidd, enters, and while he at least responds to Rose's small talk, he does little to allay her nameless fears of the room below. After Mr. Kidd and Bert, the husband, depart, a young couple appears in search of lodgings and Rose discovers that they had wandered into the basement room while looking for the landlord. Their description of what they saw, or rather felt in the darkness only heightens her growing sense of apprehension. Then, after they have gone, Mr. Kidd returns to tell Rose that she must see the man who has been waiting for her below, waiting for Bert to be gone. The stranger, when Mr. Kidd brings him in, proves to be a blind black man with a message for Rose, and while she disclaims any knowledge.
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HAROLD PINTER
Silence
1st Produced:
1969
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Landscape & Silence" Methuen, London, 1969
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
spoken reminiscences of three seated people hidden behind a grey screen.
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HAROLD PINTER
Sketches By Pinter
1st Produced:
New York
1969
Company:
-
1st Published:
in"Early Plays2 Grove Press, New York, 1968
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
sketches
Sketch
Parts:
Male
1
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Night Out; Night School; Revue Sketches
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HAROLD PINTER
Slight Ache, A
1st Produced:
Arts Theatre Club, London
1961
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "A Slight Ache & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1961
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
one man is non speaking
Notes:
broadcast 29/07/59
Synopsis:
Flora and Edward sit at the breakfast table chatting of flowers and wasps and of the slight ache which Edward feels in his eyes. Their conversation, which seems so simple and is yet so strangely revealing, then shifts to the mysterious matchseller who has been standing by their back gate for many weeks. Somehow his presence intimidates them, particularly Edward, whose ache becomes aggravated as they discuss who the matchseller may really be, and they resolve to call him in for a direct confrontation. Flora goes out to invite him to come into the house, and when he appears he proves to be an old man, dressed in rags, and so feeble that it is doubtful whether he can see or hear. Seating him in a chair Edward speaks to him in an unnaturally jovial and somehow terrifying manner and soon Edward, without a word of reply from the matchseller, is so unstrung that he cannot go on. Flora takes over the interrogation, and again the old man's silence spurs the spilling out of buried frustrations and fears.
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HAROLD PINTER
Special Offer
1st Produced:
London
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "A Slight Ache & Other Plays" Methuen, London, 1961
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
-
Sketch
Parts:
Male
-
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in Pieces of Eight
Synopsis:
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HAROLD PINTER
Tea Party, The
1st Produced:
New York
1968
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Comedy
One Act
Parts:
Male
5
Female
4
Parts Other:
2b
Notes:
Televised 1965
Synopsis:
As The New Yorker describes: "TEA PARTY is about a middle-aged self-made business man named Sisson who engages a young secretary, marries a beautiful young second wife, and takes his new brother-in-law into his business-all in the same day. Mysteries abound. What is going on between the wife and her brother? Are they indeed brother and sister? Sisson has his doubts about that (and so do I). Why does Sisson feel that there must be something wrong with his eyes, although he knows that he can see clearly and his eye doctor has assured him that his vision is perfect? He forces his secretary to tie a chiffon scarf over his eyes, and then he is able to make a pass at her, in response to one of her many come-ons. Ordinary events assume a sinister tinge. Sisson's two sons, giving him the deadpan treatment that little boys have been inflicting on their elders from time immemorial, seem as eerie as characters out of a ghost story. Always the questions remain. Is there a conspiracy against Sisson.
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HAROLD PINTER
That's All
1st Produced:
BBC Third Programme
1964
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Plays 3" Faber, London, 1991
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
Radio Sketch
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
It sings, often beautifully, of how love came and worked its transfiguration and then went away. Harold Hobson
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HAROLD PINTER
That's Your Trouble
1st Produced:
BBC Third Programme
1964
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Plays 3" Faber, London, 1991
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
Radio Sketch
-
Parts:
Male
2
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Two men in a park engage in a heated discussion about where a aman carrying a sandwich board will feel the strain first-and most.
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HAROLD PINTER
Trouble In The Works
1st Produced:
Lyric Opera House, London
1959
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
Revue Sketches
Show
Parts:
Male
2
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in One to Another
Synopsis:
A worker tells the boss that the men in the mill are satisfied with working conditions-its the products they object to.
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HAROLD PINTER
Victoria Station
1st Produced:
London
1982
Company:
-
1st Published:
ISBN
-
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
in Other Places
Synopsis:
brilliantly funny yet eerily chilling dialogue between a bewildered taxi driver (who may have gone mad) and the exasperated dispatcher who is trying, without success, to direct him to a waiting fare. The driver, who says he has fallen in love with the passenger who is asleep (or perhaps dead) on his back seat, doesn't seem to know his own location, much less that of Victoria Station.
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HAROLD PINTER
Victory
1st Produced:
-
1990
Company:
-
1st Published:
Collected Screenplays Volume 2 Faber and Faber, 2000
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
screenplay
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
from J Conrad's novel
Synopsis:
Conrad's last major novel tells the story of a Swedish baron who seeks solitude in the Dutch East Indies. He is brought back into the world, however, when he becomes involved in the life of the young English girl he rescues-only to find himself in a deadly duel with her exploiter.
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