Author Topic: lost Pinter sketch refound  (Read 4923 times)

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lost Pinter sketch refound
« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2011, 07:08:23 PM »
A forgotten sketchg by Pinter has been rediscovered and you can read it in full (a couple of pages) in The Guardian

The article about the sketch is by Mark Brown in The Guardian, 24 Oct 2011

"It was part of a 1960 revue at the Nottingham Playhouse called You, Me and the Gatepost, performed for one night only, and then promptly forgotten.

But the sketch, written by a 29-year-old Harold Pinter and lost for more than half a century, has re-emerged as a result of some diligent detective work..."

"The sketch... is very Pinter, and if there was any doubt who the author was, then the 12 designated pauses are something of a giveaway."

"...to the amazement of everyone involved, there was Umbrellas, among 25 sketches performed that night. Greaves recalls feeling "astonishment. And wanting to get home and check every book I had on Pinter to try to get to the bottom of it. It is extraordinary that things like this can crop up." While archivists do not think there are many more Pinter surprises in the British Library...".

Michael Billington says:

"...While this latest example to come to light may be a squib, it's certainly not a damp one: try reading it aloud with someone and you'll see how it works.

For a start it depends heavily for comic effect on the pauses between the lines: a skill which Pinter told me he'd acquired from seeing Jack Benny at the London Palladium in the late 1940s. As in all Pinter's sketches, you also get a hint of themes he was to explore in his plays. This one clearly is about power: character A smugly rejoices in the fact that he has it, while character B is left in a state of impotent envy."

"I wouldn't place this sketch on the same level of Pinter's miniature masterpiece, Last To Go, in which a coffee-stall owner and a newspaper seller fend off fear of loneliness and death through desultory chat."

The full article and the complete sketch are here
www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/oct/24/harold-pinter-sketch-umbrella?INTCMP=SRCH