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Brickbats and brilliance - what our critics made of his plays
31.12.08
The Birthday Party - Lyric, May 1958
Milton Shulman: Sitting through The Birthday Party is like trying to solve a crossword puzzle where every vertical clue is designed to put you off the horizontal.
It will be best enjoyed by those who believe that obscurity is its own reward. Others may not feel up to the mental effort needed to illuminate the coy corners of this opaque, sometimes macabre comedy.
The fun to be derived out of the futility of language is fast becoming a cliché of its own. And Mr Pinter just isn't funny enough.
The Dumb Waiter and The Room - Royal Court, March 1960
Alexander Walker: The flattest tracts of small-talk conceal a quicksand that can engulf reason. Pinter's characters are like people waiting for the sound of their heads falling.
Perhaps it is because doom waits most bodingly off-stage and violence never erupts openly on it that The Dumb Waiter is the more successful play.
The Caretaker - Arts, April 1960
JWM Thompson: The strange world of Harold Pinter is on view again in The Caretaker at the Arts. And in this new play he exposes it with a light of brilliance and penetration.
His comedy may be gruesome, but it is very funny. His shocks are high voltage.
The Homecoming - Aldwych, June 1965
Milton Shulman: On the most superficial level - easy laughs and coarse shockability - The Homecoming undoubtedly works. Anyone ready to be so explicit about sexual fantasies is sure to be hailed as a great and daring artist.
But the nagging doubt remains that this is not drama but a confidence trick.
No Man's Land - National, April 1975
Milton Shulman: Obscure and elusive as most of it is, No Man's Land still displays Pinter's remarkable ear for the rhythms of mundane speech and his devastating way with a verbal cliché.
