Predictable perhaps, that the late, great Harold Pinter's death announced on Christmas Day this year should have been so milked by sections of the media. I've never been quite so enamoured of him as others have; his scripts (whether original or adapted from other people’s work) come across as rather cold and superficial. I can remember seeing his frankly pretentious short play The Room at a One-Act play festival in Ipswich a few years ago, and wondered what the heck it was all about. His screenplay for The Servant seems rather contrived and unconvincing, where Dirk Bogarde’s working class servant undermines and takes over James Fox’s snooty master, a bit of whimsy on the working class Pinter’s part.
His most famous attribute was his use of language, notably the use of pauses in many of his plays. But this rather stylised approach to theatre, I find, when it works, is mainly down to the strength of the actor, not the writing.
A highly influential writer nonetheless, strongly influenced himself by Samuel Beckett – for whom Pinter (also a reasonable actor and director) performed in many of his plays, including John Gielgud’s last short film, Catastrophe in 2000.
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