Neil Bowen on (Edited )
Harold Pinter "in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."
From ‘Writing for the Theatre’: ‘There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.’
Speech, for Pinter, is a "continual evasion" of "communication.
In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of A Lunatic View, a play by David Campton, theater critic Irving Wardle also called Pinter's early plays "comedy of menace".
The play of domination and submission is hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence. Another principal theme is the volatility and elusiveness of the past.