Word: pinter
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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MARRIED. Harold Pinter, 50, English playwright (The Homecoming, Betrayal); and Lady Antonia Fraser, 48, socialite and biographer (Mary Queen of Scots, Royal Charles); both for the second time; in London. Lady Antonia has six children from her marriage to Tory M.P. Hugh Fraser; Pinter has one son from his marriage to Actress Vivien Merchant...
BECAUSE IT IS the audience's and not the actors' job to analyze characters, actors as competent as Agutter, Benedict and Jordan face a frustrating task. Pinter withholds from them even conversation as an outlet for creative interpretation. The dialogue is slow and choppy, meant to give the audience information without letting word choice and phrasing reveal additional insight into the speakers. Characters rarely utter more than four words at a time, and there are precious few monologues. Benedict, Jordan and Agutter too often let the unexpected eye contact, the strained embrace, the angry removal of a tablecloth...
...those moments when Pinter permits his characters to behave like familiar people, feeds them flowing dialogue and critical musings, the actors excel. Jordan is charmingly lost as he flirts with Emma, mourning his painful life as the prince of emptiness ruling over the state of Catatonia. Appropriately bemused, Benedict describes the ritual squash game which precedes the ritual "winner buys" lunch. Agutter's role is most difficult, for she is not given such an opportunity to step away from her job as walking chess piece. Only in the early love scenes with Jerry can she display any character...
...Pinter has chosen characters who dwell comfortably in the intellectual world: editors of literary magazines at Oxford and Cambridge, publishers of books, people who include Yeats in their suitcases when packing for vacation. Such characters allow him to demonstrate larger truths about the place of the intellect in friendship and love, particularly when it rationalizes away responsibility. Jerry has no guilt over his affair with Emma until it is long-finished, when Emma tells him over a drink that Robert knows. "But he is my best friend," Jerry whines, as if confronting the fact for the first time. By moving...
...this does little more than elegantly demonstrate a truth about ourselves. By anticipating and reconstructing the action before us, we become Pinter's partners in chess. But it is the playwright's job to be more than a play-mate. He should tell us that we only live once and should therefore sleep with our best friends' wives, or let us know that it is wrong to manipulate friendships by manipulating facts. Pinter has laid the groundwork for such conclusions, but we still await them...