Category: Harold Pinter

The Ensemble Theatre has asked director Iain Sinclair, who brought Arthur Miller’s play A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, a little while ago, to the Ensemble Theatre,  after its initial ‘life’ at the Old Fitz in Woolloomooloo, to a vivid rendering, to revive THE CARETAKER, by Harold Pinter, for us. THE CARETAKER had its first production in 1960 at the Arts Theatre Club, in London, and was transferred to the Duchess Theatre in the West End and ran for 444 performances. This play was Pinter’s 6th play but his first significant commercial success. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, written earlier in 1958, after…

  It seems a while since we have seen a play by Harold Pinter. Oh, no, there was the Sydney Theatre Company’s NO MAN’S LAND and more recently, BETRAYAL at the Ensemble Theatre. It is THE CARETAKER (1959) that we have not seen for a while. This play is one of the earliest of his successes along with THE BIRTHDAY PARTY (1957) and THE HOMECOMING (1964) that propelled Pinter into the pantheon of one of the British greats. ‘That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a…

  Ensemble Theatre presents BETRAYAL, by Harold Pinter, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 16 July – 20 August. BETRAYAL, by Harold Pinter was written in 1978, and belongs to his great middle period, and along with other works like NO MAN’S LAND (1975) and OLD TIMES , is often characterised as one of his ‘memory plays’. Pinter was given the Nobel prize for Literature in 2005. This play uses reverse chronology, and so the first scene of the play is the chronological end of the story, the last scene of the play is the first chronological event. It begins in a…

  Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company and Bank of America Merrill Lynch present NO MAN’S LAND by Harold Pinter at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. NO MAN’S LAND by Harold Pinter written in 1974, especially for John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, at the National Theatre of Great Britain, under the direction of Peter Hall (it later transferred to the West End and Broadway), is, surprisingly, having it’s first professional production in Australia. It is directed by Michael Gow and has Peter Carroll and John Gaden creating these two demanding and tantalising, inexplicable characters: Spooner and Hirst. In a…