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Plays 2: The Caretaker / The Dwarfs / The Collection / The Lover / Night School / Trouble in the Works / The Black and White / Request Stop / Last to Go / Special Offer
The second volume of Harold Pinter's collected work includes The Caretaker .
The Caretaker
It was with this play that Harold Pinter had his first major success. The obsessive caretaker, Davies, is a classic comic creation, and his uneasy relationship with the enigmatic Aston and Mick a landmark in twentieth-century drama.
'The play remains a masterpiece.' Daily Telegraph
The Collection
This one-act play for television explores the sexual manoeuvres between two couples in the clothing trade.
'Taps the adrenal flow of contemporary guilt and anxiety.' Time
The Lover
Richard and Sarah conduct themselves with apparent respectability in the mornings, whilst living out a sequence of erotic rituals in the afternoons.
'Beautifully written... the sexiest play I remember seeing on the television.' Sunday Times
The volume also includes Night School and The Dwarfs , plus five revue sketches written during the same period.
The Caretaker
It was with this play that Harold Pinter had his first major success. The obsessive caretaker, Davies, is a classic comic creation, and his uneasy relationship with the enigmatic Aston and Mick a landmark in twentieth-century drama.
'The play remains a masterpiece.' Daily Telegraph
The Collection
This one-act play for television explores the sexual manoeuvres between two couples in the clothing trade.
'Taps the adrenal flow of contemporary guilt and anxiety.' Time
The Lover
Richard and Sarah conduct themselves with apparent respectability in the mornings, whilst living out a sequence of erotic rituals in the afternoons.
'Beautifully written... the sexiest play I remember seeing on the television.' Sunday Times
The volume also includes Night School and The Dwarfs , plus five revue sketches written during the same period.
236 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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About the author
Harold Pinter
394 books777 followersHarold 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.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 10, 2015
These five plays have taken me over five years to engage with. Some of the time I think he was brilliant, others, just eh!
The Caretaker, The Dwarfs, The Collection, The Lover, Night School, The Dwarfs
The Caretaker, The Dwarfs, The Collection, The Lover, Night School, The Dwarfs
January 27, 2021
Yet another great collection of dark and, at times, wickedly humorous plays. Not so keen on The Dwarfs but loved or really liked the rest. I can just hear and see them being played out on stage! Still on a quest to find more of these collections - 8.5/10.
August 6, 2010
Harold Pinter taught me how to write plays.
Not in person, I should add.
But by reading this volume of the shorter plays and sketches, the possibilities of structure, setting and characterisation were revealed to me in a sort of epiphanic moment.
I'd read (and seen) The Birthday Party, which is in a different volume, as an undergraduate Drama student and its status as a modern classic of absurd realism (and, no, that's not an oxymoron) is assured. I'd also read The Homecoming and The Caretaker as part of the same course. And whilst I enjoyed them (aged 18) for their pace and the feeling that something was going on that I didn't fully understand, I didn't fully appreciate them until I was much older. In fact, I didn't appreciate them fully until I read (and saw) two of the shorter plays contained here: The Lover and The Collection.
Both plays are set within a closed environment. The Lover is set in the house of a young married couple; The Collection switches between two homes, occupied by another young married couple and a gay couple of different generations. These defined domestic settings create claustrophobic atmospheres in both plays and Pinter's familiar themes of power, status and gameplay are well-served in these environments. The portrayal of the relationship between the men in The Collection is strong. The symbolic knife-play between the (apparently) straight husband and the younger gay man is a highly-charged dramatic (and absurdly comic) moment: 'I've got a splendid cheese knife'.
The Lover's daring opening line, 'Is you lover coming today?', said by a husband to his typical suburban housewife was regarded as shocking when the play was first produced and published. And the sexual frankness of the whole play, mixed with a profound sense of loneliness and isolation is very engaging. The small role of the milkman is key to playing with audience anticipations about the lover and the details about her change of dress and shoes point to her husband's crisis with the identity of 'his' wife. The final line 'you lovely whore' is loaded with a variety of meanings. It is daring of Pinter to write such an open-ended play that invites the audience to make their own conclusions about the fate of the couple's marriage.
And as for Pinter teaching me about playwriting?
I had never planned to write plays. I teach Drama in a British University to undergraduates (hence why my list of books is so full of plays). But my specialism is in Renaissance Drama, not playwriting.
Not long after seeing The Lover and The Collection on stage I heard a remark by a caller to a radio station. It was about the possibility of the government enforcing identity cards and the police's ability to stop and search individuals without suspicion of crime. The caller said, 'If you haven't done anything wrong then you haven't got anything to be worried about have you?'.
Everyone's got something to hide. Everyone's got a right to privacy.
Stanley's fear of the knock at the door in The Birthday Party, which leads to his interrogation and torture by Goldberg and McCann came into my mind.
The impetus to shut away one's sexual desires and pretend to be 'normal' in The Lover and The Collection came into my mind.
I was so annoyed by the caller's lack of understanding of civil liberties, and so engaged by Pinter's dramatic use of closed domestic worlds that I wrote my first play. So thank you Sir Harold Pinter, RIP.
(For those of you interested my play been staged twice. Once with a play by another new writer and once as a double-bill with my other completed play. And, yes, I'm writing some more).
Not in person, I should add.
But by reading this volume of the shorter plays and sketches, the possibilities of structure, setting and characterisation were revealed to me in a sort of epiphanic moment.
I'd read (and seen) The Birthday Party, which is in a different volume, as an undergraduate Drama student and its status as a modern classic of absurd realism (and, no, that's not an oxymoron) is assured. I'd also read The Homecoming and The Caretaker as part of the same course. And whilst I enjoyed them (aged 18) for their pace and the feeling that something was going on that I didn't fully understand, I didn't fully appreciate them until I was much older. In fact, I didn't appreciate them fully until I read (and saw) two of the shorter plays contained here: The Lover and The Collection.
Both plays are set within a closed environment. The Lover is set in the house of a young married couple; The Collection switches between two homes, occupied by another young married couple and a gay couple of different generations. These defined domestic settings create claustrophobic atmospheres in both plays and Pinter's familiar themes of power, status and gameplay are well-served in these environments. The portrayal of the relationship between the men in The Collection is strong. The symbolic knife-play between the (apparently) straight husband and the younger gay man is a highly-charged dramatic (and absurdly comic) moment: 'I've got a splendid cheese knife'.
The Lover's daring opening line, 'Is you lover coming today?', said by a husband to his typical suburban housewife was regarded as shocking when the play was first produced and published. And the sexual frankness of the whole play, mixed with a profound sense of loneliness and isolation is very engaging. The small role of the milkman is key to playing with audience anticipations about the lover and the details about her change of dress and shoes point to her husband's crisis with the identity of 'his' wife. The final line 'you lovely whore' is loaded with a variety of meanings. It is daring of Pinter to write such an open-ended play that invites the audience to make their own conclusions about the fate of the couple's marriage.
And as for Pinter teaching me about playwriting?
I had never planned to write plays. I teach Drama in a British University to undergraduates (hence why my list of books is so full of plays). But my specialism is in Renaissance Drama, not playwriting.
Not long after seeing The Lover and The Collection on stage I heard a remark by a caller to a radio station. It was about the possibility of the government enforcing identity cards and the police's ability to stop and search individuals without suspicion of crime. The caller said, 'If you haven't done anything wrong then you haven't got anything to be worried about have you?'.
Everyone's got something to hide. Everyone's got a right to privacy.
Stanley's fear of the knock at the door in The Birthday Party, which leads to his interrogation and torture by Goldberg and McCann came into my mind.
The impetus to shut away one's sexual desires and pretend to be 'normal' in The Lover and The Collection came into my mind.
I was so annoyed by the caller's lack of understanding of civil liberties, and so engaged by Pinter's dramatic use of closed domestic worlds that I wrote my first play. So thank you Sir Harold Pinter, RIP.
(For those of you interested my play been staged twice. Once with a play by another new writer and once as a double-bill with my other completed play. And, yes, I'm writing some more).
June 16, 2020
My rating of three stars is an average of the ratings of each part of this collection, which are: The Caretaker (3), The Dwarfs (3), The Collection (3), The Lover (4), Night School (3), Revue Sketches (2).
May 5, 2009
The Caretaker ****o (4 stars)
The Dwarfs ***oo
The Collection ****o
The Lover ****o
Night School ****o
Trouble in the Works ***oo
The Black and White **ooo
Request Stop ***00
Last to Go ***oo
Special Offer **ooo
The Dwarfs ***oo
The Collection ****o
The Lover ****o
Night School ****o
Trouble in the Works ***oo
The Black and White **ooo
Request Stop ***00
Last to Go ***oo
Special Offer **ooo
April 22, 2012
Great. But I finished Plays 1 and went straight on to this. About halfway I realised that a little Pinter can go a long way as the thing seemed to collapse in on itself. I'll be rationing it out a little more in future.
May 8, 2012
A look at language like no other.
September 6, 2016
Pinter is a wonder. His sketches are incredible.
September 20, 2013
See my review of Plays 1
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews