Modernity is a concept which is met with both admiration and
disgust in the artistic world. From painting, to music, to theatre, it is safe
to say ‘modern’ has become a synonym for pretty much every adjective in the
English language, positive and negative. I adore modern theatre, not because I
find it to be philosophically challenging, politically engaging, intellectually
puzzling or existentially exciting, but because it is of its time, my time, and
so long as I claim to love theatre, I must appreciate it for all it is and all
it was when I fell in love with it.
So what form and structure does theatre typically inhabit these
days? The answer to that is simple: stories which both excite and puzzle,
characters with wit, charm, mystery and pazzaz, sets that might as well be real,
and most important of all, a powerful heart beat - all of which amounts to a
structure which is very broad but used to perfection and disappointment in many
different ways. If it is that simple, why am I still writing? I am not writing
this to educate the masses on the practices of theatre (I am in no way
qualified for that task), I am writing to thank the man responsible. Most would
argue William Shakespeare or Anton Chekhov, and whilst those men are geniuses,
they are not on my mind tonight.
I am thinking of one man, Harold Pinter.
Harold Pinter was many things: actor, writer, lover, cricketer,
poet, but above all else, he was a rebel. He snatched up any opportunity he
could find to stick it to… anyone. He believed in human beings, not systems. He
was taken to court and fined for his refusal to go to national service, he was
then taken to court and fined for his refusal to pay the fine, and such was his
life for a number of months. An intellectual from a very young age, Pinter
attended the two most prestigious performing arts academies in the United
Kingdom, until he decided that the educational system was the next focus of his
never ending rebellion. With a powerful passion like that, one can imagine how,
in a rapidly changing world, this man could set the tone for the coming
decades.
The devastation of the second World War left the island of Great
Britain inhabited by a new race of people, a broken race, a confused race, a
race of people desperately in search of something. Some people had witnessed
horrors they could only imagine in their deepest nightmares arrive on their doorstep,
and as such sought to only fill their lives with the joys of society. Others
had witnessed brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and friends ascend to the
pearly gates in a manner so gruesome that they endeavored to put into place a
political system in which such tragedy could never befall their fellow
countryman again. Some had stood at the edge of the universe and saw a vast,
confusing mess of darkness and from then on set out to find piece in that
darkness. One thing is for sure: everyone had suffered. All of these attitudes
are reflected in the work of post war playwrights, such as Arden, Beckett,
Orton and Osborne. The plays by these men and their peers still remain as some
of the most profound, beautiful, human and tragic works of art in history.
So what makes Pinter so different?
Simplicity is what sets Harold Pinter aside from the norm of the time. Now, of course, Pinter had not set out to create a template for modern theatre, quite the contrary. He rebelled against the concept of modernity. Pinter’s actions in his early career as a student actor are the actions of a man who carries a distain for modern theatre. However - much like me - he is a man who grew up and fell in love with theatre, and as such must have loved it in his own time.
The ‘puzzle play’ dominated the post war theatre world, and in order to be successful, an artist had to adhere to this strict, yet vague, structure, in which a very deep and extremely important philosophical, existential or political message is buried within the subtext of a play. The audience is then given the clues and sent off to use what they have been given and solve the puzzle. This was very quickly becoming the norm, and whilst there may have been some call for this style of theatre amongst artists, the structure had one major flaw: exclusion.
Sixty years earlier in Russia, actor Constantine Stanislavski
and his playwright friend Anton Chekhov, had created a new, universal and extremely
human style of theatre. Whilst these men, in their personal lives, may have had
certain philosophical, existential, political or sexual preferences, this did
not define their work. The plays of Chekhov and the acting style of Stanislavski
achieved one thing above all else: it ensured that the theatre was a place for
humanity. A place where human beings from every walk of life could come together
and share in everything, from the depths of their despair to the heights of
their joy. It was a place where no one would be made to feel excluded because
they hadn’t the ability or education to solve a puzzle. The first group of
people to truly perfect what I like to call ‘theatre of beauty’. This sadly was
lost in the post war blackness.
Samuel Beckett is a writer acclaimed for his post war existential
plays and a man whom this essay would lead you to believe was Pinter’s sworn
enemy. However, if we have learned anything about Pinter, it is that he did not
act based on what should be the case. He was in fact a close friend of Mr.
Beckett, an artist whose work I would describe as devoid of humanity, but
unlike myself, Pinter was a hyper intelligent and very intellectual man. He
could analyze Beckett’s work in a way that I never could, he could see the
beauty in an otherwise disturbing landscape. I don’t wish to call Beckett a
hollow playwright or a turgid dramatic figure. I believe that he holds within
his work a profound beauty but, much like the theatre of his time, this beauty
is sadly inaccessible to me and so many others, leaving us with only the rather
disturbing surface and a feeling of immense confusion.
“The Dumb Waiter” is Harold Pinter’s second and, I would passionately argue, greatest stage play. It is a comedy, tragedy, sexual play, drama, thriller, horror or just a play about two friends in a basement in Birmingham. I once read this play and it was about two undercover spy’s waiting to make an arrest. A day of intense study gave me enough evidence to present this as the absolute truth, until the next day when I read a completely different play on the same pages. It was about two young men who had - through stupidity and ambition - landed a role in the organized crime industry and struggle with the consequences. With complete confidence, I began to write my analysis of the play, two thousand words and then off to bed. I awoke the next morning to find that someone had stolen my gangster play and replaced it with a heart breaking story of father and son trying to make ends meet. I therefore gave up with my intellectual endeavor and simply enjoyed a new play on my doorstep every day.
As you see, this play
is bursting with subtext, beauty and despair, just like every other play of its
day. What makes it special is that this piece can only be explored on a human
level. I could take my mother, a woman of simple tastes and immediate joys, to
the theatre, where she can feel like an elegant and intelligent intellectual.
At the same time sharing laughter and tears with her son, two actors, one director,
a crew of technicians and one hundred and fifty ordinary people who are allowed
to experience the true joys of theatre.
So we get down to the biggest question of all: what on earth
causes a teenage boy to leap from his bed at 2 a.m and rush for a computer to write
an evaluative essay on Harold Pinter, littered with spelling errors and non-existent
words? The answer is: the truth. I am a Pinter fan through and through, I own a
library of intellectual evaluations of his work and I see something missing
from them all. I cannot speak for Pinter’s true intentions in playwriting, nor
can anyone else except Pinter. I can, however, not as an intellectual but as a
theatre lover, state what he has achieved: he discovered the immensely profound
in the beautifully simple. He revived a heart beat in the theatre that is still
going strong today. He opened the theatre to the human race and still invites
us all in to this day.
Thank you Mr. Pinter.
