Flashback

Playwright Nina Raine meets Harold Pinter, 1999

WHEN THIS PHOTOGRAPH was taken I was probably already half-drunk and very relieved. I was 24, trying to find my way as a writer, and to earn the rent I was working as a waitress at The River Café with my friend Katherine Tozer. Kathy and I missed putting on plays – at university she’d acted and I’d directed. We thought, ‘How can we do a play and also hold down these jobs?’

I’d become obsessed with Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes, a dark, funny two-hander between a husband and wife. Ruth Rogers, the owner of The River Café, has a house in Chelsea that’s basically two houses hollowed out – a huge, high space. I went there one day and thought, ‘We could do Ashes to Ashes here because it’s one set, over one evening.’ So I hatched this plan with Kathy and we asked Ruthie. It was typical of her that she said, ‘Yeah, let’s do this, you can direct and we’ll invite lots of people and make a party of it.’

The first thing I did was write to Harold Pinter. He wrote back saying he’d like to meet me before giving his permission. When I went to his house in Notting Hill he was charming. He said, ‘Look, you can do the play on two conditions: one is that I’m allowed to invite 10 guests’ – I think Kenneth Jupp [the playwright, also pictured] was on his list, and Edna O’brien and Peter Hall – ‘and the other is that I want to see a run before you do it.’

We rehearsed, then invited Harold to a dress run. We were so nervous at first; all the actors – Kathy and Elliot Levey – could think was, ‘I’m speaking Harold Pinter’s words in front of Harold Pinter.’ But he had wonderful, specific notes: ‘This word is important in this line,’ or, ‘This is more of a joke.’ It demystified the whole thing.

This photo was taken when we’d finished the actual performance. It was very intense. The room was rammed; about 140 people came. People sat all the way up the stairs that go up the side of the room, and along the mezzanine with their legs hanging off, so it was kind of like a theatre. Harold made a speech and said, ‘Oh, it was the cat’s whiskers.’ I thought, ‘I wish I could put that on my CV.’

That night was a bit of a love-in. He was about

Harold made a speech and said, ‘Oh, it was the cat’s whiskers.’ I thought, ‘I wish I could put that on my CV’

to direct his play Celebration at the Almeida with Keith Allen and Lindsay Duncan, and said, ‘I’ll send it to you, you can have a read.’ A couple of days later the script arrived with a letter in his mad, huge handwriting. He ended up offering Kathy and me walk-on parts as waitresses, which was brilliant because I could watch him direct.

Harold had this reputation as a scary, inscrutable person, but I saw him be avuncular, and paternal with the cast and thought, ‘Here’s a playwright who can really direct their own work.’ I just had to find out whether I’d be able to do it as well. After Celebration I got a bursary [to train as an assistant director] at the Royal Court; I’m sure I got that because I could talk about theatre first-hand.

Now a play I wrote, Consent, is on at the Harold Pinter Theatre, which feels pretty special, particularly when you’re in the stalls bar surrounded by photographs of him. Looking at this photograph, I feel quite proud, and nostalgic for that me who took a massive gamble. You get older and realise how hard you can fall on your face. I was reckless to do that thing, but it paid off.

— Interview by Tina Nandha

Consent is on until 11 August

Harold Pinter (left) with Raine and Kenneth Jupp at the Ashes to Ashes post-production party