Harold Pinter
One for the Road/Victoria Station, Young VicFriday, 07 October 2011This November, experimental theatre company Hydrocracker will bring The New World Order – a site-specific cycle of five Pinter plays – to a former government building in Hackney. Doubtless the immersive impact will add disquieting emphasis to Pinter... Read more... |
The Shadow Line, Series Finale, BBC TwoFriday, 17 June 2011I see there are still a few brave souls trying to peddle the "searing televisual masterpiece" line, often in high-profile BBC publications, but I suspect rather more of us may have been veering towards an ever-healthier scepticism as Hugo Blick's... Read more... |
Betrayal, Comedy TheatreFriday, 17 June 2011This is a play that begins after the end of an affair, and threads its precise, forensic way back to the very beginning of it. As the lovers are awkwardly reunited after two years, the theme of deceit as a web of competing and ambiguous claims is... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Actor Nigel LindsayMonday, 13 June 2011His only previous visit to musical theatre was as Nathan Detroit in the Donmar’s West End production of Guys and Dolls. And now Lindsay sits in the sumptuous dressing room – it feels more like a small flat – at Drury Lane once occupied, he is proud... Read more... |
Moonlight, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 13 April 2011One wants to be antagonised by Harold Pinter. In his substantial early dramas (The Homecoming, The Caretaker, The Birthday Party), aggression and menace coil through the texts like rattlesnakes. He was, then, revolutionary. Maybe it's glib -... Read more... |
Debate: Should Theatre Be On Television?Tuesday, 30 November 2010The relationship between stage and screen has always been fraught with antagonism and suspicion. One working in two dimensions, the other in three, they don't speak the same visual language. But recent events have helped to eat away at the status... Read more... |
The Room: Harold Pinter's 80th birthday celebratedTuesday, 12 October 2010On 10 October, 2010 Harold Pinter would have turned 80. To celebrate, a group of actors gathered in a room to read The Room, his first play, to an invited audience. Among those present was his widow Antonia Fraser.The play was introduced by Matthew... Read more... |
Rock and Chips, BBC One/ Arena: Harold Pinter - A Celebration, BBC FourMonday, 25 January 2010Only Fools and Horses, whose last new episode was broadcast to the traditionally bloated Christmas audience in 2003, has enjoyed several kinds of afterlife. It lives on lexically, in the form of the Peckhamspeak inherited by its viewers – “cushty”... Read more... |
The Caretaker, Trafalgar StudiosTuesday, 19 January 2010It is almost an article of faith that over the 50 years since its first production, The Caretaker has become a classic of the British theatrical canon. Its carefully calibrated medley of deadpan, slapstick, and ennui, highbrow miserable-ism and low-... Read more... |
A Wit in the Stalls: Frank JohnsonFriday, 09 October 2009Frank Johnson, the great parliamentary sketch-writer who died in 2006, was a passionate fan of opera and ballet. While intensely admiring certain artists, he kept eye and pen sharp for his observations of cultural matters, mocking cabals of opinion-... Read more... |
Pinter the CricketerSunday, 20 September 2009“Cricket was very much part of my life from the day I was born,” Harold Pinter once said, only partly joking. “There was a general feeling about cricket. In the 1930s the whole of England loved cricket, I think – that was my impression as a child,... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Michael CaineWednesday, 09 September 2009Michael Caine has made more than 100 films: from Zulu, The Ipcress File, Alfie and Get Carter to The Italian Job and Educating Rita. He won best supporting actor Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules. This interview dates from... Read more... |
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