“Uncovers the Precipice Under Everyday Prattle and Forces Entry

BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA March 21, 2019 Betrayal Harold Pinter “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's Contents: Introduction 1 closed rooms” A Brief Author 2-3 Biography An introduction to 4-6 Betrayal Harold Pinter’s 7-8 Last Interview A note from 8 Camila Notes 9 Page 2 A Brief Author Biography Early Life Pinter started out as an actor. bring home a homeless man to After studying at the Royal live with them—a man who then Writer and political activist Academy of Dramatic Art for a exerts a strange hold over the Harold Pinter is most famous for time, he worked in regional brothers. The play, like many of his plays. Inspired in part theater in the 1950s and Pinter's works, conveys "a world by Samuel Beckett, he created his sometimes used the stage name of perplexing menace," and in it own distinctive style, marked by David Baron. Pinter wrote a Pinter uses "a vocabulary all his terse dialogue and meaningful short play, The Room, in 1957, own," as a critic for The New York pauses. He was the son of a and went on to create his first Times once explained. Jewish tailor and grew up in a full-length drama, The Birthday lower middle-class neighborhood Party. The Birthday The Homecoming (1965), in London. In his grammar school Party premiered in London in considered by some to be his years, Pinter was athletic and 1958 to savage reviews, and masterwork, explored familial especially fond of playing cricket. closed within a week. One critic, tensions. In the play, a man brings Harold Hobson of The Sunday his wife to meet his father and During World War II, Pinter saw Times of London, offered a brothers after a long some of the bombing of his city by dissenting opinion, writing that estrangement. The wife ends up the Germans. He was sent away Pinter was "the most original, leaving him to stay with his to escape the Blitz at one point. disturbing and arresting talent in family. The drama moved to This firsthand experience of war theatrical London," according to Broadway in 1967 and won a and destruction left a lasting the Los Angeles Times. Tony Award—Pinter's only impression on Pinter. At the age Broadway honor. The of 18, he refused to enlist in the Major Works Homecoming was later turned military as part of his national into a film featuring many of its service. A conscientious objector, With 1960's The Caretaker, Pinter original cast, including Ian Holm, he ended up paying a fine for not had his first taste of success. The Terence Rigby and Vivien completing his national service. play is about two brothers who Merchant. Pinter had met Page 3 Merchant when he was working to highlight the mistreatment of played at the event. as an actor, and the couple had the Kurdish people in Turkey. married in 1956. He and fellow playwright Arthur Pinter succumbed to cancer on Miller had visited Turkey December 24, 2008. He was Around this time, Pinter also together a few years earlier. survived by his second wife, branched out into film, writing writer Antonia Fraser, his son the screenplays for his own Death and Legacy from his first marriage, Daniel, works as well as the works of and his six stepchildren. After being diagnosed with others. He wrote The cancer in 2001, Pinter continued Servant (1963) Pinter's work has inspired and his writing and activism. He and Accident (1967), both informed generations of decried Britain's involvement in directed by Joseph Losey and playwrights, especially Tom the Iraq War, and he called both starring Dirk Bogarde. Losey and Stoppard and David Mamet. U.S. President George W. Pinter worked together on one Pinter's plays are still performed Bush and British Prime more film—1970's The Go- around the world, with new Minister Tony Blair "terrorists," Between, starring Julie audiences experiencing the according to the Financial Times. Christie and Alan Bates. Perhaps distinct, strange and foreboding Pinter expressed some of his one of Pinter's best-known atmosphere so often created by outrage in his poetry, screen adaptations was the late writer. Of Pinter, fellow particularly his 2003 1981's The French Lieutenant's playwright David Hare once said, collection, WAR. In a poem Woman, starring Jeremy "The essence of Pinter's singular entitled "God Bless America," Irons and Meryl Streep. appeal is that you sit down to he wrote: "Here they go again / every play he writes in certain In 1978, Pinter brought to the The Yanks in their armoured expectation of the unexpected," stage another of his best- parade / Chanting their ballads according to the Los Angeles regarded works, the of joy / As they gallop across Times. drama Betrayal. This tale of the big world / Praising infidelity and marital meltdown America's God / The gutters are [https://www.biography.com/ seemed to reflect the writer's clogged with the dead." These people/harold-pinter-9441163] life in some ways, in particular political reflections helped his affair with TV personality Pinter earn the Wilfred Owen Joan Blakewell. He was later Award for poetry. involved with Lady In 2005, Pinter was honored Antonia Fraser who was married with the Nobel Prize for to a member of Parliament and a Literature. The selection mother of six. The pair were committee cited Pinter a writer eventually able to shed their "who, in his plays, uncovers the respective spouses and married precipice under everyday prattle in 1980. Pinter and Fraser, a and forces entry into talented writer in her own right, oppression's closed rooms." became a very popular couple in Some saw the choice of Pinter, literary circles. an antiwar campaigner, as a Pinter's politics became more political statement. He wasn't explicit in his late works. The well enough to accept the prize short play Mountain Language in person, and he gave his Nobel (1988), for instance, was written lecture in a pre-recorded video Page 4 An introduction to Betrayal In Harold Pinter's Betrayal, an Kate, negotiating different reticence about speaking, and the affair and its revelation are versions of their shared past. We way their words mirror one portrayed in reverse cannot even be sure whether another: chronological order. William Anna is alive or dead, a ghost, a McEvoy explores how this memory or a guilty projection of Jerry: Well. reversal focuses our attention Kate’s or Deeley’s unconscious. Emma: How are you? on the ways in which meaning The play marks the transition Jerry: All right. and knowledge are from the existential enigmas of Emma: You look well. constructed, and on the ability Pinter’s earlier work to texts that Jerry: Well, I’m not all that well, of language to hide as much as deal with how perception is really. it reveals. subjective and memory can be The word ‘well’ occurs four times manipulated. First performed on 15 November in five lines, as if they are looking 1978 at the National Theatre in So what leads Esslin to for ways to open communication London, Betrayal was Harold call Betrayal a ‘major stylistic but have to resort to a repeated Pinter’s seventh full-length play. change’? In many ways, it is a word to fill the gap. As the scene Martin Esslin says that it much more conventional play than continues, the two characters ‘represents a major stylistic change, Pinter’s earlier works. It features enter into a complex game of even something like a new a middle-class love-triangle in the tentative self-exposure, testing beginning in Pinter’s development form of two men and a woman, each other’s emotional as a playwright’. Up until that point, Jerry, his best friend Robert and boundaries, not sure but wanting Pinter had been firmly associated Robert’s wife Emma, who are, as to know how the other feels with the 'Theatre of the Absurd', a Robert Clyman puts it, ‘stylized without betraying their own term Esslin himself had coined to variations on characters we vulnerability to rejection or describe the work of writers such already know from the more indifference. as Samuel Beckett and Eugene densely coded genre of The play progresses in a series of Ionesco which subverted realism realism’. We learn about an extra- snapshots from the previous nine and staged the irrational instead. In marital affair, watch the years, its overall arc taking us plays such as The Birthday characters as they pursue it, lie back to 1968, when the affair Party (1958), The Caretaker (1960) about it and find out about it; and began. The reverse chronology is and The Homecoming (1964), Pinter feel a strong undertow of regret not smooth though: three scenes had offered audiences often and guilt as passions cool and the take us slightly forward a month working-class characters trapped in chilly realities of betrayal leave or two in a specific year, while the threatening scenarios – ‘comedies their imprint. time gap between the scenes of menace’ as they were famously sometimes extends to three years dubbed – in which motives were What Esslin is alerting us to is the way Betrayal completely (as in the final Scenes, 8 and 9). unexplained and violence simmered The overall effect is a rhythm of beneath the surface. transforms our role as readers and spectators by recounting the crisis and dilation and a temporal From the 1970s onwards, with events largely in reverse instability as the past is plays such as Old Times (1971), chronological order, starting with reconstructed for us.

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