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...could also have said that each production of a play creates its own unique meaning. When Old Times had its premiere in London, with Colin Blakeley, Vivien Merchant and Dorothy Tutin as the threesome, it seemed the story of a man victimized by two women; in the Broadway version later that year, when the stars were Robert Shaw, Dorothy Tutin and Mary Ure, the man seemed the predator, the women his prey...
...This holiday season, Log lore has a new wrinkle: Chicago-based cable network WGN America has re-recorded a new version of the holiday classic for broadcast nationwide. Yule Log: The Golden Age of Christmas promises nine hours of freshly filmed, high-definition Yule Log merriment, from the office fireplace of former Tribune Co. President Colonel McCormick, accompanied by recordings of classic radio shows - including rarely-heard radio versions of holiday classics A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life (featuring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed reprising their film roles...
...maturity with his second full-length play, The Caretaker, which the Lord Chamberlain, the British censor, called "a piece of incoherence in the manner of Samuel Beckett" - unintentional high praise indeed. It's the tale of an old homeless man, Jenkins (played onstage and in the excellent 1963 film version by Donald Pleasance), who is brought to the home of the simple-minded Aston (Robert Shaw) and his conniving brother Mick (Alan Bates). Jenkins begins as the ratty interloper but becomes sympathetic by default as the brothers play their mind games. The plot fits the contours of a standard nightmare...
...married? Is she his wife, or perhaps a woman he's engaged to as a test of men's sexual predation? Pinter would tell you to figure it out for yourself, or don't bother figuring. Looked at today, the play makes perfect sense as Pinter's ribald, misanthropic version of Snow White, with the father and brothers as the dwarfs and the "husband" as her Prince Charming. And the wicked witch with the poisoned apple? Pinter, presenting his play...
...movies. Assigned all manner of British novels to adapt, he turned virtually all of them - The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, Accident, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Handmaid's Tale - into parables of class inequity and betrayed alliances. (He also did a starchy version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon and, for his last script, an ugly botch of the Anthony Shaffer thriller Sleuth.) He directed other men's plays, notably Simon Gray's (Butley), and appeared frequently onstage and screen. The man kept busy...