Reviews for One Foer the Road Harold Pinter
| Ane for the Route | |
|---|---|
 Hardcover ed., Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1985 | |
| Written by | Harold Pinter |
| Date premiered | xiii March 1984 |
| Place premiered | The Lyric Studio, Hammersmith, London |
| Original language | English language |
| Subject | Torture, rape, and murder of political prisoners; human rights |
| Genre | Drama |
| Setting | A room in a house in an unspecified location. |
| Official site | |
One for the Route is an overtly political one-act play past Harold Pinter, which premiered at Lyric Studio, Hammersmith, in London, on 13 March 1984, and was first published by Methuen in 1984. Pinter's I for the Road is not to be confused with the Willy Russell play of the same name.
Background [edit]
One for the Route, considered Pinter's "statement nigh the human rights abuses of totalitarian governments",[1] was inspired, according to Antonia Fraser,[2] by reading on May 19, 1983, Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, a book nigh torture on Argentina's military dictatorship; later, on January 1984, he got to write it afterwards an argument with two Turkish girls at a family birthday political party on the subject of torture.
The yr post-obit the publication, Pinter would visit Turkey with Arthur Miller "to investigate allegations of the torture and persecution of Turkish writers";[3] as he explains further in his interview with Nicholas Hern, "A Play and Its Politics", conducted in Feb 1985 and published in 1985 in the revised and reset Eyre Methuen hardback[4] and in 1986 in the Grove Evergreen paperback[5] and illustrated with product photographs taken at the premiere by Ivan Kyncl, torture of political prisoners in countries like Turkey "is systematic".[6] Due to the tolerance and even support of such human rights abuses by the governments of Western countries like the United States, Pinter emphasizes (prophetically it turned out given later revelations about extraordinary rendition) in One for the Road how such abuses might happen in or at the direction of these democracies also.
In this play the actual physical violence takes place off stage; Pinter indirectly dramatizes such terror and violence through verbal and not-verbal allusions to off-stage acts of repeated rape of Gila, concrete mutilation of Victor, and the ultimate murder of their son, Nicky. The furnishings of the violence that takes place off stage are, nevertheless, portrayed verbally and non-verbally on stage.
Though in the interview, Pinter says that he himself "always find[southward] agitprop insulting and objectionable […] now, of form I'g doing the aforementioned thing".[seven] He observes that "when the play was done in New York, as the second part of a triple-bill [Other Places, directed by Alan Schneider, at the Manhattan Theatre Gild (1984)],[ane] a goodly percentage of people left the theatre when it was over. They were asked why they were going and invariably they said, 'We know all about this. We don't need to exist told.' At present, I believe that they were lying. They did not know about it and did non want to know".[seven]
Setting [edit]
The play takes place in "A room" in a business firm during the class of one day ("Morning time", "Afternoon", and "Night"), but the location of the room is unspecified. The furniture in the room, a "desk" and a "machine" used as a telephone intercom, and the confined on the windows, equally illustrated past the premiere product photographs, suggests that the room in a domestic house has been converted into an office and that the business firm functions as a prison house[8] The use of some common English colloquial expressions (e.yard., the titular "One for the Road" repeated past Nicolas regarding having another drink) implies that the action could take place in Keen U.k. or America, or some other English-speaking land among "civilised" people.[9]
Synopsis [edit]
Victor and his married woman Gila, who take obviously been tortured, as their "clothes" are "torn" and they are "bruised",[x] and their seven-year-old son, Nicky, are imprisoned in separate rooms of a house by a totalitarian regime represented by an officer named Nicolas. Though in control locally—"I can do absolutely anything I like"[11] —he is non the final arbiter of power, since he refers to outside sources to validate his deportment: "Do y'all know the man who runs this land?";[12] "God speaks through me."[thirteen] But the play reveals that Nicolas is insecure and that he overcompensates by aggressive gestures and words, threatening both Victor and Gila with a peculiar gesture, waving and jabbing his "big finger" and his "lilliputian finger […] both at the aforementioned time" earlier their eyes;[14] while he tries to converse with Victor every bit if they were both "civilised" men, he stresses gratuitously that "Anybody respects me here"[fifteen] and invents depraved fantasies of having sexual activity with a menstruating Gila,[xvi] fifty-fifty ruminating perversely that she has "fallen in love" with him.[17] Pinter highlighted Nicolas' insecurities in his ain performance of the role as directed by Robin Lefèvre in 2001, calculation stage business organization at the start; as Michael Billington describes in his review of a operation at the New Ambassadors Theatre, "In a long, silent prelude we run across Nicolas psyching himself up for the ensuing ritual."[18]
When Nicolas confronts Gila, he refers to sexual torture of her that has taken and will proceed to take identify off stage: "Have they [my soldiers] been raping you? […] How many times? How many times have you been raped? Pause. How many times?" […] "How many times have you been raped?"[nineteen]
Though Nicolas chats in an ostensibly-innocuous manner with Victor's and Gila's seven-twelvemonth-one-time son Nicky most whether the child "Would like to exist a soldier" when he grows upward,[twenty] he bullies even the fiddling boy: "You like soldiers. Expert. But you spat at my soldiers and you kicked them. You attacked them."[20] After Nicky says, "I didn't similar those soldiers", Nicolas replies menacingly: "They don't like you either, my darling."[21]
Victor'due south and Gila'south specific "offences" (if in that location are whatever) go unnamed. Nicolas accuses Gila of mentioning her father when she responds to a question about where she met her husband by proverb that she met him in "a room", in her "father's room"; Nicolas exaggerates this mere mention as if she were "to defame, to debase, the retentiveness of [her dead] father"—"a wonderful human being […] a human being of honour" whom he claims to have "loved […] as if he were my ain father".[22]
In his concluding exchange with Victor, Nicolas' use of the past tense signifies that the soldiers have killed Nicky and portends his parents' similarly terrifying fate at their hands: "Your son. I wouldn't worry about him. He was a little prick" (italics added),[23] leading to Pinter's final phase directions, as Victor "straightens and stares at" Nicolas, followed past "Silence" and "Blackout."[24]
Characters [edit]
- Nicolas Mid 40s
- Gila xxx
- Victor xxx
- Nicky 7
Notable productions [edit]
The Grove Press edition of the play lists eight strange countries where the play had been staged by the fourth dimension information technology went to press in 1985, with a list of 10 additional countries in which futurity productions were being planned.[25] Pinter's official website features a calendar of later productions, and the page devoted to One for the Route provides some hyperlinked foreign productions.[26]
Premiere: The Lyric Studio, Hammersmith – 1984 (thirteen March 1984) [edit]
Part of a double bill with Victoria Station. Bandage:[27] [28]
- Alan Bates (Nicolas)
- Roger Lloyd-Pack (Victor)
- Jenny Quayle (Gila)
- Stephen Kember or Felix Yates (Nicky)
Product team:
- Harold Pinter, Director
- Tim Bickerton, Designer
- Dave Horn, Lighting
American premiere: Other Places, Manhattan Theatre Club, New York City, April 1984 [edit]
Part of triple beak with Victoria Station and A Kind of Alaska. Bandage:[1]
- Kevin Conway (Nicolas)
- Greg Martin (Victor)
- David George Polyak (Nicky)
- Caroline Lagerfelt (Gila)
Production squad:
- Alan Schneider, Director
- John Lee Beatty, Set design
- Jess Goldstein, Costume design
- Rocky Greenberg, Lighting blueprint
- Lynne Meadow, Artistic director
- Barry Grove, Director
BBC-TV production, transmitted on 25 July 1985 [edit]
Same cast as London premiere, except that Gila was played by Rosie Kerslake and Nicky by Paul Adams. Kenneth Ives directed.[28]
In triple neb Other Places, Duchess Theatre, London, 7 March – 22 June 1985 [edit]
Also directed by Kenneth Ives. Cast:[28]
- Colin Blakely (Nicolas)
- Roger Davidson (Victor)
- Rosie Kerslake (Gila)
- Daniel Kipling or Simon Vyvyan (Nicky)
Gate Theatre, Dublin / Lincoln Heart Harold Pinter Festival – Summer 2001 [edit]
Cast:[18]
- Harold Pinter (Nicolas)
- Lloyd Hutchinson (Victor)
- Indira Varma (Gila)
- Rory Copus (Nicky)
Production squad:
- Robin Lefèvre, Director
- Liz Ashcroft, Set & Costume Blueprint
- Mick Hughes, Sound Design
In double bill with Party Time, BAC, London, 2003 [edit]
Bandage:[29]
- Jason Barnett (Victor)
- Kristin Hutchinson (Gila)
- Colin McCormack (Nicolas)
- Kadell Herida/Shakir Joseph (Nicky)
Production team:
- Bijan Sheibani, Director
- Paul Burgess, Stage design
- Guy Kornetski, Lighting design
- Emma Laxton, Sound Design
- Daisy O'Flynn, Production Manager
- Abigail Gonda, Producer
References [edit]
Annotation regarding quotes from the 1986 Grove edition: as Pinter uses three spaced periods for pauses in his dialogue, editorial ellipses of iii unspaced periods are herein placed within brackets.
- ^ a b c Rich, Frank. "Three by Pinter" (Web). The New York Times . Retrieved 21 March 2013.
- ^ Fraser, Antonia (2010). Must you go?. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN978-0-297-85971-0.
- ^ Pinter, Harold. "Campaigning confronting Torture" (Web). HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
- ^ Pinter 1985, pp. 5–23
- ^ Pinter 1986, pp. 7–23
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. thirteen
- ^ a b Pinter 1986, p. 18
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 30 ff.
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 31
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 31, 61
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 33
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 47
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 36, xl
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 33, 71
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 36
- ^ Pinter 1986, pp. 46–47
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 48–l
- ^ a b "One for the Road 2001 Deed Productions & Gate Theatre, Dublin Presents in Clan with the Lincoln Middle Festival and the Ambassador Theatre Group". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter. Retrieved 7 February 2009. This page reprints the texts of some reviews, including Billington's in the Guardian of 4 July 2001, entitled "Pinter the Role player's Muscular Dominance".
- ^ Pinter 1986, pp. 70–71
- ^ a b Pinter 1986, p. 58
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 59
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 66
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 79
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 80
- ^ Pinter 1986, p. 26
- ^ 1 For The Road at www
.haroldpinter .org - ^ "One for the Road –Premiere" (Spider web). HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter. Retrieved 7 Feb 2009.
- ^ a b c Pinter 1986, p. 27
- ^ "Political party Time & One for the Road, BAC, London, 2003" (Web). HaroldPinter.org . Retrieved seven February 2009.
Works cited [edit]
- Pinter, Harold. One for the Road[: A Play]. London: Methuen, 1984. ISBN 0-413-56060-0 (x). ISBN 978-0-413-56060-5 (xiii). (Hardcover.)
- –––. I for the Road: With Production Photos by Ivan Kyncl and an Interview on the Play and Its Politics. Rev. and reset ed. London: Methuen, 1985. ISBN 0-413-58370-8 (10). ISBN 978-0-413-58370-3 (13). ISBN 0-413-58950-i (10). ISBN 978-0-413-58950-seven (13). ["With illustrations and introduction commencement published … in 1985" (p. 4). Includes "A Play and Its Politics: A Chat between Harold Pinter and Nicholas Hern" (pp. 5–23).]
- –––. One for the Road: With Production Photos past Ivan Kyncl and an Interview on the Play and Its Politics. New York: Grove Printing, 1986. ISBN 0-394-62363-0 (10). ISBN 978-0-394-62363-4 (13). ISBN 0-394-54575-3 (10). ISBN 978-0-394-54575-2 (13). (Evergreen paperback ed.) ["A Play and Its Politics: A Chat between Harold Pinter and Nicholas Hern", pp. 7–23, is dated February 1985; Includes "Postscript" past Harold Pinter, p. 24, dated May 1995.]
External links [edit]
- Other Places at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- One for the Route at HaroldPinter.org: The Official Website of the International Playwright Harold Pinter
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_the_Road_(Pinter_play)
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