Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter was born on 10 October in London’s East End. His father was a tailor, who had come to London, like Pinter’s mother, with the immigrant wave from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century. Harold Pinter started out as a touring rural actor at 19, and earned his living as a dish-washer and waiter when he had no theatrical engagement. He alternated acting with writing and attempts to get his poetry published. After a few years of adamant work, he wrote The Room in a week, followed by The Birthday Party and The Dumbwaiter the same year. The Birthday Party was the first of his plays to be performed by a theatre.

With a few minor exceptions, the critics were unimpressed by the young dramatist and his work. Pinter would later be described as the most original, disturbing and captivating talent of London’s theatre scene at the time.

Pinter’s dramas focus largely on our ineptness at communicating, our unsatisfying relationships, and the unpredictability of our actions. About the tendency to strive for unimportant things and the goals we never achieve. Harold Pinter puts the emphasis on what we don’t say to each other. He reports from the boundary of silence.

With his pen, Pinter deftly entices laughter that sticks brutally in our throat and turns to mute horror. With gentle prompting the audience is guided via sharp turns on a journey through the world of violence and fear. All mixed with a good portion of black humour. This is what makes Harold Pinter’s work so unique; the lucidly precise dialogue, the subtle characters, and the obsessive power play that combine to make his plays frightening, moving and madly hilarious at the same time.

Harold Pinter uses his writing and his intellect for rebellion, against the leaders and their power. He emphasises every citizen’s duty to use our freedom of thought and freedom of speech. A responsibility towards those who do not have those rights. Politics, political theatre and protests – all are incorporated in his profession. All merge in creation, although Harold Pinter is careful to point out the difference between his plays and his private life. His plays do not propound an ideology, and yet he willingly accedes that he writes political theatre – if by that we mean theatre that reflects reality.

In Ashes to Ashes Pinter enacts a contemporary game of gender politics. He explores the links between sexuality and fascism, while revealing a connection between threat, violence and male brutality.The play portrays woman as the victim of the male brutality Pinter believes characterises our world, but he is careful not to romanticise woman.

The Jewish Theatre’s production was the Nordic première of the play.

Harold Pinter was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005.