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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.142.106
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:03 am:   

Another star of our literary firmanent has gone out. Pinter was a definitive playwright of the later twentieth century – one who refused to be assimilated into anything complacent, reassuring or politely melancholic. His work was taut, edgy and disturbing. In particular, 'No Man's Land' is a metaphysical nightmare of tremendous power.

From the outset, a lot of critics didn't get Pinter: they mistook black humour for ludicrousness, and strangeness for obscurity. Pinter defamiliarised our world, exploring the unspoken rules and hidden threats that control our lives. His later play 'One For the Road' was a more direct and conventionally realistic portrait of a vicious interrogator within a repressive government – the distorted psychology and communication being, in this case, a direct reflection of reality.

Within modern weird fiction, Pinter may have influenced British writers such as Aickman, Campbell and Lamsley. He gave a green light to dramatists that terror, violence and madness were not off limits in the theatre, and did not need to be cloaked in polite and familiar terms. You go away from a good performance of a Pinter play with a knot of fear and doubt in your stomach that takes time to unravel. It's not a 'pleasing terror', and it's not a thrilling and cathartic shock of the moment: it's something much deeper, something allied to fears that resist expression in a dishonest culture. It's deeply satisfying that a writer of such intelligent darkness and unease was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.159.82.2
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:22 am:   

Well said Joel - got to agree with all that - only seen a few Pinters on stage - The Homecoming & A Kind of Alaska (a short one, that, but still with prompt-scaring pauses) spring to mind, but I've seen several others.
A loss, but his work still stands.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:40 am:   

Agreed indeed, Joel. I fear some of his later work is unfortunate - The Handmaid's Tale deserved far better, though maybe The Last Tycoon is unadaptable. Still, all his great work will live on, not least the screenplays Losey filmed.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.84.240
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:43 am:   

I admire him for his great tenacity. He'll always be immortal through his work.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.44.101.171
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:59 am:   

But for him to die on xmas eve is a bit hilarious, you've got to admit.
Wonder if he'd sky plussed Wallace and Gromit?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.0.112.152
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 12:05 pm:   

I'm ashamed to say that I never really got into his work, but I found his Nobel Speech very powerful. John Pilger would be proud.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 12:24 pm:   

I fear I don't find his death at all hilarious.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.44.101.171
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 12:59 pm:   

No, not really. Sorry about that. Just my slightly evil/mischievous subconscious making patterns out of proximities against my will.

I never got into him either, Gary, much as I kept thinking I would have liked to have done. I used to mentally compare the stuff I read of his with Ramsey's, but found Ramsey's more affecting - and Ramsey wrote more, to boot.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.184
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 02:03 pm:   

Hi Joel, not being picky but it was, of course, the Nobel Prize in Literature that Pinter won. (I don't think that sentence will win me one.)

The first play I ever saw was The Dumb Waiter. It stayed with me, followed me home from the theatre and has been lurking around in the corners of my life every since. The rest of his work has left me cold, though. I've tried, but really can't escape feeling that it's hollow. Still, he made my introduction to the theatre electrifying, so I'll always be grateful to him for that. It's so easy for an artist to think their work is forgotten, but art can heal and comfort in quiet, powerful ways even long after the artist has passed on.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.64.81
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 02:04 pm:   

I found the words Pinter wrote for his funeral and gave to Michael Gambon to keep for him, three months ago, very moving...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7800829.stm
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.64.81
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 02:21 pm:   

I should have said that the words are from No Man's Land.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.165.182
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 02:25 pm:   

A terrible loss. As I think Proto's said before, '08 has been a truly awful year for the loss of great writers, actors, and PEOPLE- ones we really can ill afford to do without. Paul Newman, Studs Terkel... I can't remember all the others. Maybe I don't want to. And now Pinter. One last vicious blow before the end of the year. Then again, there are still four more days to go.

One of the many reasons I greatly admired this man, as an artist and an individual:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7799734.stm
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.44.101.171
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 02:48 pm:   

Eartha Kitt, too, in recent days.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.44.101.171
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 02:49 pm:   

Xmas day, in fact.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.145.36.225
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 04:43 pm:   

I agree with Joel's assessment of Harold Pinter.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.227.228
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 04:53 pm:   

I can add nothing to Joel. I loved how Pinter turned the film of THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN into his own vision: that movie is all Pinter, and hardly anything Fowles (now, which is superior?... tough one...). One of the greats.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.165.182
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 06:23 pm:   

Tommy Tee, who managed my all-time favourite band, New Model Army, for over 20 years, also passed away on December 23rd. Not a name anybody will know except Army die-hards, but he played a major role in something beautiful for many years. Fuck. Can we please not have any more good people and gifted, talented artists dying this year, please?
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.66.42
Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 07:17 pm:   

Let us hope not.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.14.95
Posted on Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 04:05 am:   

I promise, Simon, to take all my vitamins.

(... er... that's the kind of joke that dances so near the edge of my occasionally-paranoid superstitions, I kind of regret making it....)
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Adriana (Adriana)
Username: Adriana

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.230.239.233
Posted on Friday, January 02, 2009 - 06:06 pm:   

I'm speechless. Sigh.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.155.107.93
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 11:05 am:   

hey, a ready-made Pinter thread...

Last night, I saw a performance of these two plays written by Harold Pinter at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester. A Slight Ache (1958) and The Lover (1962).
Creditable performances with great scene changing (every night presumably – phew!)

A Slight Ache was ‘a wasp and a bullock’ alienation and nemonymity for a Golden Pond couple, and someone lurking eerily behind their garden gate in a Robert Aickman like fashion. Memorable scenes. Great acting. Left an Ivy Compton-Burnett flavour. Match girl resonances.

The Lover may have been original in 1962 about role-playing between a young husband and wife. But others have done it since. Raunchy in places with a James Bond Dr No feel of the 1962 I recall. Bullock alienation again. No sign of a wasp. Both plays could have done without the music. Loved Gus Gallagher’s FAWLTY Towers antics from time to time. He is a great actor. Gina Isaac, too.

Themes seem to percolate. Alfred J Prufrock? Themes in retrospect a bit simplistic. A great evening.

[Incredibly, there was a young couple in front of me in the audience doing their own versions of 'The Lover' role playing. They didn't sit together during the first play after their own brief role-play before the first play started. Then they sat together after the interval during the second play after a different personal role play together. Enhanced my evening's interest.]

des

PS: While writing, my novel NEMONYMOUS NIGHT - possibly Pinteresque (in part) - has now been given its official page at Chomu Press website for publication in 2011. Yay!
http://chomupress.com/
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.149.161.187
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 12:29 pm:   

I love it when the audience seems in on it all. I always wanted to write a play that had actors planted in the audience who then interacted with the characters, one of the audience members then leaving the audience to go and 'live' in the production.
But I think Woody Allen already did it.
Recently I saw a play where the woman playing the ghost was not very good looking. She was meant to be a real temptress but she just looked very Anne Widdecombish. It was very distracting.
(It was Blithe Spirit btw, a play I happen to think is bloody awful. Written in six days? I'm not surprised.)
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.155.107.93
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 12:41 pm:   

I was under the strong impression that the young couple in the Pinter audience were real people.
But, maybe, just maybe, Tony, they were plants.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.149.161.187
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 01:23 pm:   

Uncertainty is a lovely thing!
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 02:03 pm:   

Des, I often suspect audience members in the theatre are plants. It's the way they become taller as the evening progresses, and open up when the lights come on.

I recently saw Tim Crouch's new play 'The Author', in which there is no stage (it's one for a studio theatre only). Nothing happens and then some of the audience (scattered around the auditorium) start talking, and it's clear they have unfinished business. You're never quite sure who is in the cast and who isn't, but the play turns out to be a tightly-knit, coherent and very disturbing piece of work. I recommend it highly.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 02:19 pm:   

I wrote a play where one of the characters starts the play sitting in the front row filming the action on stage (the audience don't know she's part of the show). After a couple of minutes of dialogue on stage, the action breaks down and the characters on stage look at her and start complaining about the script, at which point she stops filming and gets on stage with the others. It's then revealed that the scene we've just scene is a "play within a play" scenario (although it's a film within a play if you want to get technical)
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.155.107.93
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 02:32 pm:   

Joel: Des, I often suspect audience members in the theatre are plants. It's the way they become taller as the evening progresses, and open up when the lights come on.
----------------------------------
Amid the applause of rain.

Especially at performances of Wesker?
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.0.116
Posted on Friday, November 19, 2010 - 10:04 am:   

I recently saw Tim Crouch's new play 'The Author', in which there is no stage (it's one for a studio theatre only). Nothing happens and then some of the audience (scattered around the auditorium) start talking, and it's clear they have unfinished business. You're never quite sure who is in the cast and who isn't, but the play turns out to be a tightly-knit, coherent and very disturbing piece of work. I recommend it highly

Joel - we recently saw that in Bristol. I can't remember if we mentioned on here or not. A very interesting experience, from its 'cosying' of the audience at the beginning 'It's lovely the theatre, isn't it? All nice & safe' etc etc to its attempts to disquiet and eventually shock those who had come to see it (Lady P & I are of course beyond such things but quite a few of the audience obviously hada bit of difficulty coping wth some of what came up). Definitely worth going to see, though.

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