Harold Pinter Plays 2
Page 1
HAROLD PINTER
Plays Two
The Caretaker,
The Dwarfs,
The Collection,
The Lover,
Night School,
Trouble in the Works,
The Black and White,
Request Stop,
Last to Go
and Special Offer
CONTENTS
Title Page
Introduction: Writing for Myself
The Caretaker
First Presentation
Act One
Act Two
Act Three
The Dwarfs
First Presentation
The Dwarfs
The Collection
First Presentation
The Collection
The Lover
First Presentation
The Lover
Night School
First Presentation
Night School
Revue Sketches
First Presentations
Trouble in the Works
The Black and White
Request Stop
Last To Go
Special Offer
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
Writing for Myself
Based on a conversation with Richard Findlater published in The Twentieth Century, February 1961.
The first time I went to a theatre, as far as I remember, was to see Donald Wolfit in Shakespeare. I saw his Lear six times, and later acted with him in it, as one of the king’s knights. I saw very few plays, in fact, before I was twenty. Then I acted in too many. I did eighteen months in Ireland with Anew McMaster, playing one-night stands in fit-ups, and I’ve worked all over the place in reps – Huddersfield, Torquay, Bournemouth, Whitby, Colchester, Birmingham, Chesterfield, Worthing, Palmers Green and Richmond. I was an actor for about nine years (under the name of David Baron) and I would like to do more. I played Goldberg in The Birthday Party at Cheltenham recently, and enjoyed it very much. I’d like to play that part again. Yes, my experience as an actor has influenced my plays – it must have – though it’s impossible for me to put my finger on it exactly. I think I certainly developed some feeling for construction which, believe it or not, is important to me, and for speakable dialogue. I had a pretty good notion in my earlier plays of what would shut an audience up; not so much what would make them laugh; that I had no ideas about. Whenever I write for the stage I merely see the stage I’ve been used to. I have worked for theatre in the round and enjoyed it, but it doesn’t move me to write plays with that method in mind. I always think of the normal picture-frame stage which I used as an actor.
All the time I was acting I was writing. Not plays. Hundreds of poems – about a dozen are worth republishing – and short prose pieces. A lot of these were in dialogue, and one was a monologue which I later turned into a revue sketch. I also wrote a novel. It was autobiographical, to a certain extent, based on part of my youth in Hackney. I wasn’t the central character, though I appeared in it in disguise. The trouble about the novel was that it was stretched out over too long a period, and it incorporated too many styles, so that it became rather a hotch-potch. But I’ve employed certain strains in the book which I thought were worth exploring in my radio play The Dwarfs. That was the title of the novel.
I didn’t start writing plays until 1957. I went into a room one day and saw a couple of people in it. This stuck with me for some time afterwards, and I felt that the only way I could give it expression and get it off my mind was dramatically. I started off with this picture of the two people and let them carry on from there. It wasn’t a deliberate switch from one kind of writing to another. It was quite a natural movement. A friend of mine, Henry Woolf, produced the result – The Room – at Bristol University, and a few months later in January 1958 it was included – in a different production – in the festival of university drama. Michael Codron heard about this play and wrote to me at once to ask if I had a full-length play. I had just finished The Birthday Party …
I start off with people, who come into a particular situation. I certainly don’t write from any kind of abstract idea. And I wouldn’t know a symbol if I saw one. I don’t see that there’s anything very strange about The Caretaker, for instance, and I can’t quite understand why so many people regard it in the way they do. It seems to me a very straightforward and simple play. The germ of my plays? I’ll be as accurate as I can about that. I went into a room and saw one person standing up and one person sitting down, and a few weeks later I wrote The Room. I went into another room and saw two people sitting down, and a few years later I wrote The Birthday Party. I looked through a door into a third room, and saw two people standing up and I wrote The Caretaker.
I don’t write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That’s what I did originally, and I think it’s worked – in the sense that I find there is an audience. If you’ve got something you want to say to the world, then you’d be worried that only a few thousand people might see your play. Therefore you’d do something else. You’d become a religious teacher, or a politician perhaps. But if you don’t want to give some particular message to the world, explicitly and directly, you just carry on writing, and you’re quite content. I was always surprised that anyone initially came in to see my plays at all, because writing them was a very personal thing. I did it – and still do it – for my own benefit; and it’s pure accident if anyone else happens to participate. Firstly and finally, and all along the line, you write because there’s something you want to write, have to write. For yourself.
I’m convinced that what happens in my plays could happen anywhere, at any time, in any place, although the events may seem unfamiliar at first glance. If you press me for a definition, I’d say that what goes on in my plays is realistic, but what I’m doing is not realism.
Writing for television? I don’t make any distinction between kinds of writing, but when I write for the stage I always keep a continuity of action. Television lends itself to quick cutting from scene to scene, and nowadays I see it more and more in terms of pictures. When I think of someone knocking at a door, I see the door opening in close-up and a long shot of someone going up the stairs. Of course the words go with the pictures, but on television, ultimately, the words are of less importance than they are on the stage. A play I wrote called A Night Out did, I think, successfully integrate the picture and the words, although that may be because I wrote it first for radio. Sixteen million people saw that on television. That’s very difficult to grasp. You can’t even think about it. And when you write for television, you don’t think about it. I don’t find television confining or restrictive, and it isn’t limited to realism, necessarily. Its possibilities go well beyond that. I have one or two ideas in my mind at the moment which wouldn’t be very realistic and which might be quite effective on television.
I like writing for sound radio, because of the freedom. When I wrote The Dwarfs a few months ago, I was able to experiment in form – a mobile, flexible structure, more flexible and mobile than in any other medium. And from the point of view of content I was able to go the whole hog and enjoy myself by exploring to a degree which wouldn’t be acceptable in any other medium. I’m sure the result may have been completely incomprehensible to the audience, but it isn’t as far as I’m concerned, and it was extremely valuable to me.
No, I’m not committed as a writer, in the usual sense of the term, either religiously or politically. And I’m not conscious of any particular social function. I write because I want to write. I don’t see any placards on myself, and I don’t carry any banners. Ultimately I distrust def
initive labels. As far as the state of the theatre is concerned, I’m as conscious as anyone else of the flaws of procedure, of taste, of the general set-up in management, and I think things will go on more or less as they are for some considerable time. But it seems to me that there has been a certain development in one channel or another in the past three years. The Caretaker wouldn’t have been put on, and certainly wouldn’t have run, before 1957. The old categories of comedy and tragedy and farce are irrelevant, and the fact that managers seem to have realized that is one favourable change. But writing for the stage is the most difficult thing of all, whatever the system. I find it more difficult the more I think about it.
THE CARETAKER
The Caretaker was first presented by the Arts Theatre Club in association with Michael Codron and David Hall at the Arts Theatre, London, on 27 April 1960.
On 30 May 1960, the play was presented by Michael Codron and David Hall at the Duchess Theatre, London, with the following cast:
MICK, a man in his late twenties Alan Bates
ASTON, a man in his early thirties Donald Woodthorpe
DAVIES, an old man Donald Pleasence
Directed by Donald McWhinnie
On 2 March 1972, a revival of the play was presented at the Mermaid Theatre, London, with the following cast:
MICK John Hurt
ASTON Jeremy Kemp
DAVIES Leonard Rossiter
Directed by Christopher Morahan
The play was produced at the Shaw Theatre, London, in January 1976 with the following cast:
MICK Simon Rouse
ASTON Roger Loyd Pack
DAVIES Fulton Mackay
Directed by Kevin Billington
It was produced at the National Theatre in November 1980 with the following cast:
MICK Jonathan Pryce
ASTON Kenneth Cranham
DAVIES Warren Mitchell
Directed by Kenneth Ives
The action of the play takes place in a house in west London
ACT I A night in winter
ACT II A few seconds later
ACT III A fortnight later
A room. A window in the back wall, the bottom half covered by a sack. An iron bed along the left wall. Above it a small cupboard, paint buckets, boxes containing nuts, screws, etc. More boxes, vases, by the side of the bed. A door, up right. To the right of the window, a mound: a kitchen sink, a step-ladder, a coal bucket, a lawn-mower, a shopping trolley, boxes, sideboard drawers. Under this mound an iron bed. In front of it a gas stove. On the gas stove a statue of Buddha. Down right, a fireplace. Around it a couple of suitcases, a rolled carpet, a blow-lamp, a wooden chair on its side, boxes, a number of ornaments, a clothes horse, a few short planks of wood, a small electric fire and a very old electric toaster. Below this a pile of old newspapers. Under ASTON’S bed by the left wall, is an electrolux, which is not seen till used. A bucket hangs from the ceiling.
Act One
MICK is alone in the roam, sitting on the bed. He wears a leather jacket.
Silence.
He slowly looks about the room looking at each object in turn. He looks up at the ceiling, and stares at the bucket. Ceasing, he sits quite still, expressionless, looking out front.
Silence for thirty seconds.
A door bangs. Muffled voices are heard.
MICK turns his head. He stands, moves silently to the door, goes out, and closes the door quietly.
Silence.
Voices are heard again. They draw nearer, and stop. The door opens. ASTON and DAVIES enter, ASTON first, DAVIES following, shambling, breathing heavily.
ASTON wears an old tweed overcoat, and under it a thin shabby dark-blue pinstripe suit, single-breasted, with a pullover and faded shirt and tie. DAVIES wears a worn brown overcoat, shapeless trousers, a waistcoat, vest, no shirt, and sandals. ASTON puts the key in his pocket and closes the door. DAVIES looks about the room.
ASTON. Sit down.
DAVIES. Thanks. (Looking about.) Uuh.…
ASTON. Just a minute.
ASTON looks around for a chair, sees one lying on its side by the rolled carpet at the fireplace, and starts to get it out.
DAVIES. Sit down? Huh … I haven’t had a good sit down … I haven’t had a proper sit down … well, I couldn’t tell you.…
ASTON (placing the chair). Here you are.
DAVIES. Ten minutes off for a tea-break in the middle of the night in that place and I couldn’t find a seat, not one. All them Greeks had it, Poles, Greeks, Blacks, the lot of them, all them aliens had it. And they had me working there … they had me working.…
ASTON sits on the bed, takes out a tobacco tin and papers, and begins to roll himself a cigarette. DAVIES watches him.
All them Blacks had it, Blacks, Greeks, Poles, the lot of them, that’s what, doing me out of a seat, treating me like dirt. When he come at me tonight I told him.
Pause.
ASTON. Take a seat.
DAVIES. Yes, but what I got to do first, you see, what I got to do, I got to loosen myself up, you see what I mean? I could have got done in down there.
DAVIES exclaims loudly, punches downward with closed fist, turns his back to ASTON and stares at the wall.
Pause, ASTON lights a cigarette.
ASTON. You want to roll yourself one of these?
DAVIES (turning). What? No, no, I never smoke a cigarette. (Pause. He comes forward.) I’ll tell you what, though. I’ll have a bit of that tobacco there for my pipe, if you like.
ASTON (handing him the tin). Yes. Go on. Take some out of that.
DAVIES. That’s kind of you, mister. Just enough to fill my pipe, that’s all. (He takes a pipe from his pocket and fills it.) I had a tin, only … only a while ago. But it was knocked off. It was knocked off on the Great West Road. (He holds out the tin). Where shall I put it?
ASTON. I’ll take it.
DAVIES (handing the tin). When he come at me tonight I told him. Didn’t I? You heard me tell him, didn’t you?
ASTON. I saw him have a go at you.
DAVIES. Go at me? You wouldn’t grumble. The filthy skate, an old man like me, I’ve had dinner with the best.
Pause.
ASTON. Yes, I saw him have a go at you.
DAVIES. All them toe-rags, mate, got the manners of pigs. I might have been on the road a few years but you can take it from me I’m clean. I keep myself up. That’s why I left my wife. Fortnight after I married her, no, not so much as that, no more than a week, I took the lid off a saucepan, you know what was in it? A pile of her underclothing, unwashed. The pan for vegetables, it was. The vegetable pan. That’s when I left her and I haven’t seen her since.
DAVIES turns, shambles across the room, comes face to face with a statue of Buddha standing on the gas stove, looks at it and turns.
I’ve eaten my dinner off the best of plates. But I’m not young any more. I remember the days I was as handy as any of them. They didn’t take any liberties with me. But I haven’t been so well lately. I’ve had a few attacks.
Pause.
(Coming closer.) Did you see what happened with that one?
ASTON. I only got the end of it.
DAVIES. Comes up to me, parks a bucket of rubbish at me tells me to take it out the back. It’s not my job to take out the bucket! They got a boy there for taking out the bucket. I wasn’t engaged to take out buckets. My job’s cleaning the floor, clearing up the tables, doing a bit of washing-up, nothing to do with taking out buckets!
ASTON. Uh.
He crosses down right, to get the electric toaster.
DAVIES (following). Yes, well say I had! Even if I had! Even if I was supposed to take out the bucket, who was this git to come up and give me orders? We got the same standing. He’s not my boss. He’s nothing superior to me.
ASTON. What was he, a Greek?
DAVIES. Not him, he was a Scotch. He was a Scotchman. (ASTON goes back to his bed with the toaster and starts to unscrew the plug. DAVIES follows him). You got an e
ye of him, did you?
ASTON. Yes.
DAVIES. I told him what to do with his bucket. Didn’t I? You heard. Look here, I said, I’m an old man, I said, where I was brought up we had some idea how to talk to old people with the proper respect, we was brought up with the right ideas, if I had a few years off me I’d … I’d break you in half. That was after the guvnor give me the bullet. Making too much commotion, he says. Commotion, me! Look here, I said to him, I got my rights. I told him that. I might have been on the road but nobody’s got more rights than I have. Let’s have a bit of fair play, I said. Anyway, he give me the bullet. (He sits in the chair). That’s the sort of place.
Pause.
If you hadn’t come out and stopped that Scotch git I’d be inside the hospital now. I’d have cracked my head on that pavement if he’d have landed. I’ll get him. One night I’ll get him. When I find myself around that direction.
ASTON crosses to the plug box to get another plug.
I wouldn’t mind so much but I left all my belongings in that place, in the back room there. All of them, the lot there was, you see, in this bag. Every lousy blasted bit of all my bleeding belongings I left down there now. In the rush of it. I bet he’s having a poke around in it now this very moment.
ASTON. I’ll pop down sometime and pick them up for you.
ASTON goes back to his bed and starts to fix the plug on the toaster.
DAVIES. Anyway, I’m obliged to you, letting me … letting me have a bit of a rest, like … for a few minutes. (He looks about.) This your room?
ASTON. Yes.
DAVIES. You got a good bit of stuff here.