Party Time and The New World Order

by Harold Pinter

Born in London in 1930, Harold Pinter holds an undisputed place in the front ranks of contemporary playwrights. These two plays, Party Time and The New World Order, work in chilling tandem, each demonstrating the inevitable brutality that comes with a total conviction of right. Party Time is a terrifying portrait of the culpable indifference of a privileged class, of the cruelty engendered in its members by political disruption, and of their merciless extinction of dissent. At an elegant cocktail party, a stylish bourgeoisie discusses country clubs and summer homes, while below in the streets a sinister military presence protects them from the unmentionable horrors of poverty, vulgarity, squalor. In The New World Order, two interrogators harass a man whom they condemn for his questioning of received ideas, and whom we know only as threat to their closed vision of democracy.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 29, 1993

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

[Tahmineh Baradaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

نمایشی کوتاه درمذمّت نظم نوین جهانی .کارهای قدیمی هارولدپینتررابیشتردوست داشتم.

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

party time and the new world order are two of pinter's more overtly political works. as his career progressed, the british dramatist became less reticent about infusing his plays with ideological belief. written as the first gulf war was beginning, these two works are some of pinter's most scathingly critical. both plays, however unfortunately, are perhaps even more relevant now then when they were first staged in the early 1990s.

party time points the finger at bourgeois disinterest amid the suffering of others. the callous unconcern towards anything unrelated to material indulgence and perceived security is thoroughly indicted. pinter alludes to the similarities between personal indifference and that of nations. .

the new world order is unsparingly scornful and entirely devoid of equivocation. the play is a single scene long (apparently staged in under ten minutes), and contains but three characters. only two of the characters engage in dialogue, as the third is a blindfolded prisoner. the new world order, brevity notwithstanding, is an utterly disturbing and horrifying portrayal of the moments before torture is employed to extract politically-sensitive information. "well, you're right. you're right to feel pure. you know why?... because you're keeping the world clean for democracy." harrowing in its ongoing pertinence.

[Elahe · Rating 4 out of 5]

party time رو که‌ هیچ‌جوری پیدا نکردم بخونم
ولی یه فیلم‌تئاتر ازش دیدم که خییلی آماتور بود و حتی اگر نمایشنامه خوب می‌بود اون تئاتره از سکه مینداختش.
the new world order رو دوست داشتم.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pinter's dialogue is natural and convincing but at the same time air tight in like a literary sense.

Clearly this is what Pinter intended, but the reader is left with only a few subtle hints on the state of the outside world, the world beyond the circumscribed setting of the plays -- and these are the key to each play. Each time I was left with a 'huh?' kind of feeling, and felt that the plays could have offered so much more. But of course the air-tight shortness of the plays is part of the point, and Pinter killed it.

The stories are quite chilling if you really think about them.

[Richard]

I am a huge Pinter fan and have read most everything of his to my knowledge. This is vintage Pinter, but reflective of his later (more angry) writing as he reacted to world events and politics. It's hard not to think about his Nobel Prize speech reading these two plays.

Of course, like all plays, the power of these works is most evident onstage. I saw The New World Order some years ago in Washington D.C. It was visceral and uncomfortable to watch.

[Nevena Kotarac · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ponekad čujem stvari. Onda je sve mirno. Imao sam ime. Džimi. Zvali su me Džimi. To mi je bilo ime. Ponekad čujem stvari. Onda je sve mirno. Kada je sve mirno, čujem sopstveno srce. A kad nastane užasna buka, ne čujem ništa. Ne čujem, ne dišem, slep sam. Onda je sve mirno. Čujem otkucaje srca. To verovatno nisu otkucaji moga srca. To su verovatno otkucaji srca nekog drugog. Šta sam ja? Ponekad vrata tresnu, čujem neke glasove, onda prestanu. Sve prestaje. Sve to prestaje. Sve se zatvara. Zatvara se. Sklapa se. Sve se sklapa. Zaklapa se. Više nikad ništa ne vidim. Sedim upija tamu. To imam. Tama je u mojim ustima i ja je usisavam. To je jedino što imam. Moja je. Moja. Usisavam je." Harold Pinter je, uz Beketa, najvažniji pozorišni pisac druge polovine dvadesetog vijeka. U njegovim dramama svijet je zaustavljen na ivici ambisa. Hladnoća, udaljenost i neprijateljska, podrugljiva tama. Sve što uradimo, privremeno je. Košmar postojanja nas usisava i polako rastače. Bespomoćni smo. Citirani monolog iz drame "Vreme zabave" na potresan i maestralan način opisuje svijet Pinterovog pozorišta. Tajanstvena atmosfera i poetični razgovori o svemu i svačemu, dok se mračna stvarnost racija i vanrednog stanja brižljivo skriva, grade u ovoj knjizi jedan autentičan i zastrašujuće poznat kosmos. Kafka je tvrdio da "knjiga treba da bude sjekira za ledeno more u nama". Ova knjiga to jeste. Čitati je, znači steći dragocjeno, otrežnjujuće iskustvo.

[justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahh, fond repeated memories of acting out the five minute text of "New World Order" to start off each Late Night Theater--

"Des: Look at this man here, for example. He's a first class example. See what I mean? Before he came in here he was a big shot, he never stopped shooting his mouth off, he never stopped questioning received ideas. Now--because he's apprehensive about what's about to happen to him--he's stopped all that, he's got nothing more to say, he's more or less called it a day. I mean once--not too long ago--this man was a man of conviction, wasn't he, a man of principle. Now he's just a prick."

[Wes Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both of these plays are really good in an "I'm going to make you fucking uncomfortable" kind of way. Not that these are awful to read/see, but that the subject matter is really ookie(?). Party Time: Elitists at a party interact while an assumed violent police act is occuring nearby against impoverished masses. Even the interactions of the party goers is verbally caustic at times. The New World Order is all about totalitarian police brutality against a prisoner (ala McDonaugh's Pillowman protagonist - only earlier and psychological).

[c · Rating 4 out of 5]

changing my review from 3/5 to 3.5/5, close to 4/5