Word: pinter
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...Harold Pinter is the Pavlov of playwrights. He feeds questions and withholds answers, leaving playgoers in a state of salivary anxiety. Written by Pinter in 1958, but opening on Broadway last week, The Birthday Party is certain to evoke in audiences another tantalized swivet...
What is Stanley's crime? Are Goldberg and McCann agents of a murder ring, symbols of organized society, or instruments of fate? What torture do the pair inflict on Stanley? Rarely has Pinter left more to the playgoer's imagination. The American cast keeps its English accents tidy but not its performances, and Director Alan Schneider lets the first act drowse. Basically, the play lacks the athletic snap and resonance of The Caretaker's dialogue and the musky animal magnetism of The Homecoming family. But whether or not he baffles playgoers, Harold Pinter exerts a modish appeal...
...Pinter's play patterns coalesce about three recurring elements and phases-the room, the torment, and the expiation. The room is the setting, the torment is often an extended abrasive comic put-on, and the expiation is usually an act of physical or psychic violence. The room is a square womb. Though lighted, it seems dark, partly because it is sometimes windowless or tightly curtained against any blade of outside light. Outside this haven of refuge lurks the nameless, faceless intruder who will violate the safety and innocence of the room...
...torment is often comic, but it is no laughing matter. In Pinter as in Kafka, punishment presupposes guilt, even if the crime is unspecified. The act of atonement is always arbitrary. In expiation, a Pinter hero-victim may lose his life, or his wife, or his mind. Kafka's religious overtones find no echo in Pinter. To him, the universe runs with the remorseless senselessness of a concentration camp...
...ruled the jury, a "deliberate form of frenzy." So, in a way, was Orton's funeral (Halliwell was buried separately). Instead of organ requiems, the service was accompanied by a recording of Orton's favorite song, the Beatles' A Day in the Life. Playwright Harold Pinter read a few lines of poetry and Actor Donald Pleasence delivered an ode he composed himself-a reminder that in his plays Joe Orton had treated death as a grisly...