Pinter, Harold

Pinter, Harold [ Harold Da Pinta] (1930– ), English dramatist, who for some years acted in the provinces under the name of David Baron. His first full-length play The Birthday Party (1958; NY, 1967) baffled the critics. It was followed by a double bill of The Room and The Dumb-Waiter (1960), but he came into prominence only with The Caretaker (also 1960; NY, 1961), an archetypal Pinter play in which the three characters, one of them a tramp, demonstrate the difficulties of communication between human beings and their consequent isolation. Next came five one-act plays—A Night Out, A Slight Ache (both 1961), The Collection (1962), produced by the RSC, and, in a double bill, The Lover and The Dwarfs (1963), both of which Pinter himself directed. His next full-length play, The Homecoming (1965; NY, 1967), was also produced by the RSC, as were another double bill, Landscape and Silence (1969; NY, 1970), and the full-length Old Times (London and NY, 1971). A double bill of Tea Party and The Basement was seen in New York in 1968 (London, 1970). No Man's Land (National Theatre, 1975; NY, 1976) provided excellent parts for John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. In Betrayal (NT, 1978; NY, 1980) successive acts move backwards in time. In 1980 The Hothouse, written over 20 years earlier, was presented in London. The triple bill Other Places (NT, 1982) consisted of Family Voices, Victoria Station, and A Kind of Alaska, the last showing a woman's awakening from a 29-year sleep; at the Duchess (1985) One for the Road replaced Family Voices. He has directed a number of plays by other writers, including James Joyce's only play Exiles and several works by Simon Gray, and has written many screenplays.

Pinter is probably the most influential of modern English playwrights, his highly individual style, when attempted by others, being labelled ‘Pinteresque’. His plays are sparsely populated, and their plots slight. His characters' motives often remain obscure, their backgrounds indefinite, their fate at the end of the play indeterminate; and their language, at least in his early plays, includes the repetitions and illogicalities of ordinary speech. The scripts are as carefully balanced, with pauses and silences exactly indicated, as musical scores.

Many of the leading feminine roles in his plays were played by his first wife Vivien Merchant (1929–82), who also played Lady Macbeth for the RSC in 1967 and was in David Mercer's Flint and Joyce's Exiles (both 1970).