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Unit 27: Harold Pinter— Introduction to the Author and the Text

Last Years and Death Notes
Despite frail health after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2001, Pinter
continued to act on stage and screen, last performing the title role of Samuel Beckett’s one-act
monologue Krapp’s Last Tape, for the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre, in October
2006. He died from liver cancer on 24 December 2008.

27.1.2 Playwright

Pinter’s career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The
Birthday Party, closed after eight performances, but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic Harold
Hobson. His early works were described by critics as comedy of menace. Later plays such as No
Man’s Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as memory plays. He directed productions of
his own plays, also those of others for stage, television and film.

Comedies of Menace (1957–1968)
Pinter’s first play, The Room, written and first performed in 1957, was a student production at the
University of Bristol, directed by his good friend, actor Henry Woolf, who also originated the role
of Mr. After Pinter mentioned that he had an idea for a play, Woolf asked him to write it so that he
could direct it to fulfill a requirement for his postgraduate work. Pinter wrote it in three days. The
production was described by Billington as a staggeringly confident debut which attracted the
attention of a young producer, Michael Codron, who decided to present Pinter’s next play, The
Birthday Party, at the Lyric Hammersmith, in 1958.

Written in 1957 and produced in 1958, Pinter’s second play, The Birthday Party, one of
his best-known works, was initially both a commercial and critical disaster, despite an
enthusiastic review in The Sunday Times by its influential drama critic Harold Hobson, which
appeared only after the production had closed and could not be reprieved. Pinter himself and
later critics generally credited Hobson as bolstering him and perhaps even rescuing his career.
In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace,
a play by David Campton, critic Irving Wardle called Pinter’s early plays comedy of menace—a
label that people have applied repeatedly to his work. Such plays begin with an apparently innocent
situation that becomes both threatening and absurd as Pinter’s characters behave in ways often
perceived as inexplicable by his audiences and one another. Pinter acknowledges the influence of
Samuel Beckett, particularly on his early work; they became friends, sending each other drafts of
their works in progress for comments.
Pinter wrote The Hothouse in 1958, which he shelved for over 20 years. Next he wrote The Dumb
Waiter (1959), which premièred in Germany and was then produced in a double bill with The Room
at the Hampstead Theatre Club, in London, in 1960. It was then not produced often until the 1980s,
and it has been revived more frequently since 2000, including the West End Trafalgar Studios
production in 2007. The first production of The Caretaker, at the Arts Theatre Club, in London, in
1960, established Pinter’s theatrical reputation. The play transferred to the Duchess Theatre in
May 1960 and ran for 444 performances, receiving an Evening Standard Award for best play of
1960. Large radio and television audiences for his one-act play A Night Out, along with the popularity
of his revue sketches, propelled him to further critical attention. In 1964, The Birthday Party was
revived both on television and on stage and was well-received.

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