The Caretaker

''Betrayal is a new departure and a bold one . . . Pinter has found a way of making memory active and dramatic, giving an audience the experience of the mind''s accelerating momentum as it pieces together the past with a combination of curiosity and regret. He shows man betrayed not only by man, but by time - a recurring theme which has found its proper scenic correlative . . . Pinter captures the psyche''s sly manoeuvres for self-respect with a sardonic forgiveness . . . a master craftsman honouring his talent by setting it new, difficult tasks'' New Society<BR><BR>''There is hardly a line into which desire, pain, alarm, sorrow, rage or some kind of blend of feelings has not been compressed, like volatile gas in a cylinder less stable than it looks . . . Pinter''s narrative method takes "what''s next?" out of the spectator''s and replaces it with the rather deeper "how?" and "why?" Why did love pass? How did these people cope with the lies, the evasions, the sudden dangers, panic and the contradictory feelings behind their own deftly engineered masks? The play''s subject is not sex, not even adultery, but the politics of betrayal and the damage it inflicts on all involved.'' The Times<BR><BR>First staged at the National Theatre in 1978, Betrayal was revived at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 1991. Twenty years after its first showing, it returned to the National in 1998.

Stanley Webber is visited in his boarding house by strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An...

The Caretaker was Harold Pinter's first play to become a major success, first performed in 1960, this classic comedy established the author's individuality with an international audience.

There is no writer who excels at the art of adaptation for the screen so much as Harold Pinter. His consummate skill and unerring ear for dialogue, coupled with his sensitivity and understanding of the work of other authors, make the three volumes of his screenplays (of which this is the first) a collective masterclass in screenwriting.<BR><BR>Included in this collection are the screenplays for The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, Accident, The Last Tycoon and Langrishe, Go Down.

'Ein Meister der Sprache, der mit sparsamen Mitteln große Wirkungen erzielt.' (Süddeutsche Zeitung)Der Ursprung meiner Stücke? Ich will so präzise wie möglich antworten. Ich ging in ein Zimmer, sah einen Menschen, der stand und einen anderen, der saß, und ein paar Wochen später schrieb ich Das Zimmer. Ich ging in ein anderes Zimmer, sah zwei Menschen dasitzen, und ein paar Jahre später schrieb ich Die Geburtstagsfeier. Ich blickte durch eine Tür in ein drittes Zimmer, sah zwei Menschen dastehen und schrieb Der Hausmeister ... Ich bin überzeugt, was in meinen Stücken geschieht, könnte überall, zu jeder Zeit, an jedem Ort geschehen, auch wenn die Ereignisse zunächst fremd erscheinen.