Harold Pinter at 75. In
One for the Road, the protagonist is Nicolas,
a whisky-sodden interrogator who has brought in a family for questioning (and, it is implied, raping and torturing). In the short, sharp shock of
The New World Order, we eavesdrop on a conversation between two torturers, held over the top of their mute, blindfolded victim's head ("We haven't even finished with him. We haven't begun."). In
Ashes to Ashes, the interrogation of Rebecca by Devlin takes a sinister turn as we learn that her ex-lover participated in state-sponsored violence. In
Mountain Language, a sadistic guard plays power games with a group of mountain dwellers, who are forbidden from speaking in anything but the language of the state. In
Party Time, Pinter lampoons the smug security of the middle classes, portraying an insufferably élite party which carries on regardless of the violence and terror on the streets outside.
Now, for Pinter's 75th birthday,
some of the tormentors and the tormented so potently etched in his later plays are assembled together in a new dramatic work with a musical setting by the composer James Clarke.
posted by matteo
on Oct 7, 2005 -
12 comments
"Hi. My name is Tony Kushner, I'm a playwright ...
Ladies and Gentlemen and Supporters of
MoveOn: the first lady of the United States,
Laura Welch Bush".
About a year and a half ago
Kushner, the
Pulitzer-prize winning author of
Angels in America, published the first act of a new play,
Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy (full text). In it, Laura Bush
reads Dostoyevsky to a classroom full of ghosts of dead Iraqi children. Now,
(in Salon, I know, I know) the first lady metacriticizes Kushner's play.
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on Aug 4, 2004 -
11 comments
