Plans for Pinter tribute give stars pause for thought
THe pauses are returning. The Pinter pauses, that is.
A company of thespians including David Suchet, Jane Horrocks, David Tennant and game Of Thrones’s Iwan rheon are believed to be in advanced talks to star in what is tentatively being called ‘Pinter At The Pinter’ — or, as one wag put it: ‘Pinter (Pause) Pinter.’
There’s nothing official yet; but the playwright’s widow, Lady Antonia Fraser, has been liaising with the owners of the Harold Pinter Theatre about staging a season of 20 of the nobel Prize-winner’s one-act plays: from the first piece he wrote, in 1957 (after seeing Quentin Crisp frying up eggs and bacon at a party); to his last, Celebration, which I remember seeing at the Almeida in 2000 as a double bill with The room.
Others are said to include A Kind Of Alaska, Mountain Language, Victoria Station, The Dumb Waiter, night School and A Slight Ache.
So far, Jamie Lloyd and writer and director Patrick Marber have been asked to stage pieces during the season, which will begin once Consent, nina raine’s national Theatre hit which is transferring to the Pinter in May, finishes its run in mid-August. Both men know the Pinter terrain well. Lloyd staged two of his works — The Hothouse and The Homecoming — when he ran a theatre company with Ambassador Theatre group at the Trafalgar Studios. And Marber directed The Caretaker at the Comedy (as The Pinter was then known) in 2004, four years before the playwright’s death on Christmas eve 2008. I gather Lady Antonia has been keen to find actors who are familiar with her husband’s texts. Some of those approached aren’t available; and there are several who are trying to shift their other commitments so that they can participate. Pinter At The Pinter is a huge undertaking — I’ve been tracking it from afar for a good ten months to see who might end up doing it. Another of the great man’s plays, The Birthday Party, starring Toby Jones, Stephen Mangan and Zoe Wanamaker, is at the Pinter until mid-April.