One for the Road

by Harold Pinter, Ivan Kyncl (Illustrator)

Dramatizes the conversation between an interrogator and his victims, a father, mother, and young son, and includes an interview with the playwright about the play's theme

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Classics, Fiction, Politics, British Literature

80 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1985

About the author

Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am reading a lot of books with totalitarian and fascist themes lately - a sign of the times, I suppose. I really think we are on the edge of a nightmare - a new Dark Age which may encompass the globe as a whole. (There's a small consolation that we may blow ourselves up before we reach that stage, so the agony would be mercifully short.)

I have been hearing about this play for a long time, and wanting to read it. Today I googled it on a whim and found a copy online. It's very short (to read - I daresay on stage it would be longer, depending on how the director paces the action) and powerful: unbelievably cruel and extremely violent, yet with nothing shown on the stage.

A family - Victor, Gila and their young son Nicky - are being held and interrogated in an undisclosed location by a sadistic policeman named Nicolas. Their crimes are unstated. There is no information regarding the country or the type of government, other than what we can infer from the dialogues and action - it is a brutal, totalitarian state.

It is clear that Victor and Gila have been tortured from their battered appearance, and the casual statements of Nicolas. It is also hinted that the menstruating Gila has been raped by more than one member of the police force. They are being held in different rooms in the same house, and the interrogator keeps on playing mental games with them, playing one off against another.

As the play moves with great economy of scene, it is the character of Nicolas that becomes more and more clear - a narcissist ("do you like me?"), obsessed with power ("I can do whatever I want") and sex ("How many times have you been raped?"): yet somehow weak - he needs to keep on reinforcing the fact that God is with him, the leader of the country loves him...and he always needs that drink ("One for the road"). The ending is sufficiently devastating, as Nicolas speaks of Nicky in the past tense: "Our son? Oh don't worry about him. He was a little prick." and if played properly, can stun any audience.

A terrifying little gem, apt for the times.

[Aryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good

[Paul]

Gosh. That was brutal.

Victor, ironically named, is the vanquished. The soldiers have trashed his home and arrested him. Victor has the bad fortune to be a book-reading bourgeois in a philistine, hypocritical theocracy. Detained in a nameless building, he is the subject of a number of interrogations by Nicolas. Unspeakable things are done to his wife and small child. And then he is released...

Its year of publication is apposite - 1984. Victor's release puts one in mind of Winston Smith, the broken man playing chess at the Chestnut Tree Café. Aside from being the title of Orwell's masterful dystopia, 1984 was the year of the Miner's Strike in Britain and of state-sponsored police brutality, the era of Pinochet and Galtieri.

Set in a dictatorship, apparently, the little details make it clear that this is an alternative Britain. For example, the heavy-drinking interrogator reaches into a sideboard for his whisky bottle. Did Pinter have in mind the sort of regime Britain might have endured in the 1980s had Pinochet's friend been given free rein?

Read for research purposes.

[maría]

read for class, tampoco me ha gustado pero laik porque arctic monkeys tiene una canción que se llama así

[Federica · Rating 4 out of 5]

molto molto breve, però interessante

[Reshma Jannath · Rating 4 out of 5]

One scary play. There is terror lurking in each of its pauses, all the more scarier for its increasing relevance in today's world of totalitarian states and power hungry leaders.

[kiho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was sold at Alan Bates as the interrogator, picturing him with his usual manic energy.

From the very beginning the play conjures up an extreme sense of urgency, there is not one word spoken too much. Pinter is in full command of language, but also of atmosphere and a feeling of dread he evokes like a screw clamp that is being tightened slowly but steadily.

There is exactly the right amount of background information we need to have to get an idea what's going on.

[claire zachanassian · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the Harold Pinter’s interview;

Jenny Quale, who starring Gila collapsed in the rehearsal on the first staging. She said you wouldn't understand what it was like. She was telling me how humiliating being helpless. All three thespian did not want to resume the play after the premiere. They thought the experience was so overwhelming.
I decied to leave writing play about torture.

[Jhoana Naranjo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sin más, no es de las peores obras que he leído de la asignatura

[diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

3 stars mostly because in some parts it made me uncomfortable, and I had a hard time trying to understand some things

[Greg Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arguably Pinter's most powerful political play. But it must be read slowly, deliberately seeking out the drama in each and every murky corner of Pinter's pendulous pauses before reading the next lacerating line. What appears to be a paragraph on the page may go on for some time on stage. 'What do you think this is? It’s my finger. And this is my little finger. This is my big finger and this is my little finger. I wave my big finger in front of your eyes. Like this. And now I do the same with my little finger. I can also use both…at the same time. Like this. I can do absolutely anything I like. Do you think I’m mad? My mother did.'

Much of the chatter is one-sided but Nic is no obvious monster, as he demonstrates certain vulnerability and empathy with his victims: a husband, wife and son who are being held prisoner by an unnamed State and tortured. But these are only the tools of a seasoned bureaucratic tyrant, a ploy to make the pain of his victims less bearable when he finally tells them the truth. Or is it the truth?

One For the Road counts among my list of profoundly influential pieces of literature.

[Gregorio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange Pinter take on Orwellian ideas is surprisingly funny, but doesn't blow minds.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read ATY 2022: book with theme of food and drink ( both the title and various lines allude to alcohol consumption which one character does throughout the play)
They say never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I say never let Pinter get in the way of a good story. A great concept ruined by poor and at times confusing dialogue and obsessive pauses

[John .R · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is well written with its pauses and you are able to imagine every scene with clarity and everything that happens behind the scene.
Just in case you want to read it.
https://programadeleitura.files.wordp...

[Granny Swithins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing.

[Shai Kauffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good and mysterious beginning and a good finale but the middle was somewhat disappointing for the expectations from him. And a good criticism of dictatorship countries

[izzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for class, good but brutal!

[Quiet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely cruel play that is both horrifying and satisfying. Composed of utmost extreme violence, Pinter's "One for the Road" is a perverse study of political torture. While the physical violence inside of the play happens between areas and outside of viewership, the interrogations of the family by the horrendous man Nicolas are by themselves scenes of violence in their own, unique way.

It is language usage, and the way it is implemented, that makes "One for the Road" both excellent and damning. No phrase is not layered with a hidden, vicious meaning. References to God and Country are threats, compliments to a person are devilish and hauntingly omniscient. No statement is without reflection of Nicolas' complete and total power over this captured family, and whether he is talking to the husband, wife, or their seven year old son, Nicolas is at all times inching himself into closer, more uncomfortable position, as if entering through "the soul in their eyes" and then tearing them in half in one swift, grotesque movement.

Very scary play. Certainly thought provoking in regards to the subject matter of torture, but also an excellent play that really presents a less observed form of human thought and ability, which is the mercilessly cruel and unsympathetic. Highly recommended.

[Kathryn Baron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The interview is more interesting than the play in some ways. The play is powerful. Even just as words on a page, it's effective. But. But. Torture exists. Government sanctioned torture exists. That's not news. It's not an alternate fact. In the end the play is really, really convincing that a horrible thing is horrible.

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrifying one-act play about torture and totalitarianism - a few taut scenes of quiet, elegantly written suspense and emotional brutality that pack more punch than most full-length dramas of the ilk (say, Death and the Maiden).

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great example of psychological torture.

[Caitriona · Rating 3 out of 5]

ick