Three or four things I know about Harold Pinter who died in London on Christmas Eve, age 78:
To visit him in his Holland Park home was to enter unwittingly into a Pinter play. After greeting me at the door of his office—which was in a separate cottage in the grounds of the house Read More
Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming (1965) is the dysfunctional family play of the modern era that redefined domestic drama. It established Mr. Pinter’s international reputation, and remains the most emotionally and verbally violent of all his memorable portraits of suppressed feeling. It’s a grotesque comedy of family life whose revival on Broadway—starring Ian McShane as the Read More
Last night Noam Chomsky was to give a lecture at the Miller Theater at Columbia University in N.Y. The Miller Theater was sold out 2 weeks back for the event, $5 a head. Probably 500 people. The outside walls of the theater were plastered with posters calling Chomsky un-American. When I came in a tall Read More
Charles Grodin has written a play about co-op board meetings in a Fifth Avenue building. Second only to writing a play about potato farming in Idaho, I’m not sure Mr. Grodin’s idea is quite so exciting as it may seem.
It could be that I have a bias against the small dramas of members Read More
The nation–and the theater community in particular–can wait no longer. Before announcing the proud winners of our 2001 Theater Awards, however, we wish to stress that all decisions of the Awards Committee are final according to the provisions set out in subsection 2(b), paragraph 52(e), of the Awards Committee Constitution.
Who is the Committee?
Edward Bond’s utterly uncompromising 1965 Saved is a hard play, as hard as nails
in a crucifix, and its importance in the history of modern drama is paramount.
Mr. Bond is a renowned British dramatist who today is uncelebrated in his own
land and is rarely produced here. His severe, utopian moral conscience is often Read More
Here are my eagerly awaited Theater Awards of the Year. Remember, the only rules are no rules. Good luck to everyone concerned. I can feel the tension rising as we speak. And the envelopes, please!
The newly named Annual Ben Brantley Award for the Most Amazing Observations in the History of Theater goes to Read More
To London for a celebratory anniversary-a perfect 70th birthday gift for Harold Pinter, nowadays treated in England with the reverence of theater royalty. More power to him! The 40th-anniversary production of The Caretaker , Mr. Pinter’s breakthrough play, which he wrote when he was an impoverished 29-year-old, is a fantastic achievement in every way.
For Read More
There are three very good reasons to rush to see the new production of Harold Pinter’s 1978 Betrayal at the American Airlines Theatre–Juliette Binoche, Juliette Binoche and Juliette Binoche! No disrespect to her co-stars Liev Schreiber and John Slattery, but that is the way love goes.
Ms. Binoche, who surely enchanted us all in The Read More
As I was saying about Tom Stoppard: Few people would deny he’s a clever sausage, including Tom Stoppard. Cleverness is the calling card of Mr. Stoppard’s alter ego, Henry, portrayed brilliantly by Stephen Dillane in the champagne revival of The Real Thing at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway. I enjoyed the play immensely; I Read More
