- One for the Road (Harold Pinter play)
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One for the Road 
Hardcover ed., Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1985
(Cover photo: Ivan Kyncl)Written by Harold Pinter Date premiered 13 March 1984 Place premiered The Lyric Studio, Hammersmith, London Original language English Subject Torture, rape, and murder of political prisoners; human rights Genre Drama Setting A room in a house in an unspecified location. Official site IOBDB profile One for the Road is an overtly-political one-act play by Harold Pinter, which premiered at Lyric Studio, Hammersmith, in London, on 13 March 1984, and was first published by Methuen in 1984.
Background
One for the Road, considered Pinter's "statement about the human rights abuses of totalitarian governments" (Rich), was inspired by Pinter's visit to Turkey with American playwright Arthur Miller as vice presidents of International Pen and his "rage" at talking to two young Turkish women who did not believe that torture of innocent political prisoners occurred or that, if it did, the victims may have deserved it and suffered less than Pinter did about it (13–14).
As he explains further in his interview with Nicholas Hern, "A Play and Its Politics", conducted in February 1985 and published in 1985 in the revised and reset Eyre Methuen hardback (5–23) and in 1986 in the Grove Evergreen paperback (7–23) and illustrated with production photographs taken at the premiere by Ivan Kyncl, torture of political prisoners in countries like Turkey "is systematic" (13). Due to the tolerance and even support of such human rights abuses by the governments of Western countries like the United States, Pinter emphasizes (prophetically it turned out given later revelations about extraordinary rendition), One for the Road shows how such abuses might happen in or at the direction of these democracies too.
In this play the actual physical violence takes place off stage; Pinter indirectly dramatizes such terror and violence through verbal and non-verbal allusions to off-stage acts of repeated rape of Gila, physical mutilation of Victor, and the ultimate murder of their son, Nicky. The effects of the violence that takes place off stage are, however, portrayed verbally and non-verbally on stage.
Though in the interview, Pinter says that he himself "always find[s] agitprop insulting and objectionable […] now, of course I'm doing the same thing" (18). He observes that "when the play was done in New York, as the second part of a triple-bill [Other Places, directed by Alan Schneider, at the Manhattan Theatre Club (1984)],[1] a goodly percentage of people left the theatre when it was over. They were asked why they were going and invariably they said, 'We know all about this. We don't need to be told.' Now, I believe that they were lying. They did not know about it and did not want to know" (18).
Setting
The play takes place in "A room" in a house during the course of one day ("Morning", "Afternoon", and "Night"), but the location of the room is unspecified. The furniture in the room, a "desk" and a "machine" used as a telephone intercom, and the bars on the windows, as illustrated by the premiere production photographs, suggests that the room in a domestic house has been converted into an office and that the house functions as a prison (30 ff.) The use of some common English colloquial expressions (e.g., the titular "One for the Road" repeated by Nicolas regarding having another drink) implies that the action could take place in Great Britain or America, or another English-speaking country among "civilised" people (31).
Synopsis
Victor and his wife Gila, who have obviously been tortured, as their "clothes" are "torn" and they are "bruised" (31, 61), and their seven-year old son, Nicky, are imprisoned in separate rooms of a house by a totalitarian regime represented by an officer named Nicolas. Though in control locally—"I can do absoluely anything I like" (33)—he is not the final arbiter of power, since he refers to outside sources to validate his actions: "Do you know the man who runs this country?" (47); "God speaks through me" (36, 40). But the play reveals that Nicolas is insecure and that he overcompensates by aggressive gestures and words, threatening both Victor and Gila with a peculiar gesture, waving and jabbing his "big finger" and his "little finger […] both at the same time" before their eyes (33, 71); while he tries to converse with Victor as if they were both "civilised" men, he stresses gratuitously that "Everyone respects me here" (36) and invents depraved fantasies of having sex with a menstruating Gila (46–47), even ruminating perversely that she has "fallen in love" with him (48–50). Pinter highlighted Nicolas' insecurities in his own performance of the role as directed by Robin Lefèvre in 2001, adding stage business at the start; as Michael Billington describes in his review of a performance at the New Ambassadors Theatre, "In a long, silent prelude we see Nicolas psyching himself up for the ensuing ritual."[2]
When Nicolas confronts Gila, he refers to sexual torture of her that has taken and will continue to take place off stage: "Have they [my soldiers] been raping you? […] How many times? How many times have you been raped? Pause. How many times?" […] How many times have you been raped? (70–71).
Though Nicolas chats in an ostensibly-innocuous manner with Victor's and Gila's seven-year-old son Nicky about whether the child "Would like to be a soldier" when he grows up (58), he bullies even the little boy: "You like soldiers. Good. But you spat at my soldiers and you kicked them. You attacked them." (58). After Nicky says, "I didn't like those soldiers", Nicolas replies menacingly: "They don't like you either, my darling" (59).
Victor's and Gila's specific "offences" (if there are any) go unnamed. Nicolas accuses Gila of mentioning her father when she responds to a question about where she met her husband by saying that she met him in "a room", in her "father's room"; Nicolas exaggerates this mere mention as if she were "to defame, to debase, the memory of [her dead] father"—"a wonderful man […] a man of honour" whom he claims to have "loved […] as if he were my own father" (66).
In his final exchange with Victor, Nicolas' use of the past tense signifies that the soldiers have killed Nicky and portends his parents' similarly terrifying fate at their hands: "Your son. I wouldn't worry about him. He was a little prick" (79; italics added), leading to Pinter's final stage directions, as Victor "straightens and stares at" Nicolas, followed by "Silence" and "Blackout" (80).
Characters
- Nicolas Mid 40s
- Gila 30
- Victor 30
- Nicky 7
Notable productions
Premiere: The Lyric Studio, Hammersmith – 1984 (13 March 1984)
- (Part of a double bill with Victoria Station:)
Cast:
- Alan Bates (Nicolas)
- Roger Lloyd Pack (Victor)
- Jenny Quayle (Gila)
- Stephen Kember or Felix Yates (Nicky)
Production team:
- Harold Pinter, Director
- Tim Bickerton, Designer
- Dave Horn, Lighting (27)[3]
American premiere: Other Places, Manhattan Theatre Club, New York City, April 1984
- (Part of triple bill with Victoria Station and A Kind of Alaska)
Cast:
- Kevin Conway (Nicolas)
- Greg Martyn (Victor)
- David George Polyak (Nicky)
- Caroline Lagerfelt (Gila)
Production team:
- Alan Schneider, Director
- John Lee Beatty, Set design
- Jess Goldstein, Costume design
- Rocky Greenberg, Lighting design
- Lynne Meadow, Artistic director
- Barry Grove, Managing director[1]
BBC-TV production, transmitted on 25 July 1985
Same cast as London premiere, except that Gila was played by Rosie Kerslake and Nicky by Paul Adams. Kenneth Ives directed. (27)
In triple bill Other Places, Duchess Theatre, London, 7 March – 22 June 1985
- (Also directed by Kenneth Ives:)
Cast
- Colin Blakely (Nicolas)
- Roger Davidson (Victor)
- Rosie Kerslake (Gila)
- Daniel Kipling or Simon Vyvyan (Nicky) (27)
Gate Theatre, Dublin / Lincoln Center Harold Pinter Festival – Summer 2001
Cast
- Harold Pinter (Nicolas)
- Lloyd Hutchinson (Victor)
- Indira Varma (Gila)
- Rory Copus (Nicky)
Production team:
- Robin Lefèvre, Director
- Liz Ashcroft, Set & Costume Design
- Mick Hughes, Sound Design[2]
In double bill with Party Time, BAC, London, 2003
Cast:
- Jason Barnett (Victor)
- Kristin Hutchinson (Gila)
- Colin McCormack (Nicolas)
- Kadell Herida/Shakir Joseph (Nicky)
Production team:
- Bijan Sheibani, Director
- Paul Burgess, Stage design
- Guy Kornetski, Lighting design
- Emma Laxton, Sound Design
- Daisy O'Flynn, Production Manager
- Abigail Gonda, Producer[4][5]
Notes
- ^ a b See performance review by Rich.
- ^ a b "One for the Road 2001 ACT Productions & Gate Theatre, Dublin Presents in Association with the Lincoln Center Festival and the Ambassador Theatre Group". HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter. http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_onefortheroad01.shtml. Retrieved 2009-02-07. This page reprints the texts of some reviews, including Billington's in the Guardian of 4 July 2001, entitled "Pinter the Actor's Muscular Authority".
- ^ "One for the Road –Premiere" (Web). HaroldPinter.org. Harold Pinter. http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_onefortheroad.shtml. Retrieved 2009-02-07.
- ^ "Party Time & One for the Road, BAC, London, 2003" (Web). HaroldPinter.org. http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_onefortheroad03.shtml. Retrieved 2009-02-07.
- ^ The Grove Press edition of the play (26) lists eight foreign countries where the play had been staged by the time it went to press in 1985, with a list of 10 additional countries in which future productions were being planned. Pinter's official website features a calendar of later productions, and the page devoted to One for the Road provides some hyperlinked foreign productions.
Works cited
Main article: Bibliography for Harold Pinter-
Pinter, Harold. One for the Road[: A Play]. London: Methuen, 1984. ISBN 0413560600 (10). ISBN 9780413560605 (13). (Hardcover.)
–––. One for the Road: With Production Photos by Ivan Kyncl and an Interview on the Play and Its Politics. Rev. and reset ed. London: Methuen, 1985. ISBN 0413583708 (10). ISBN 9780413583703 (13). ISBN 0413589501 (10). ISBN 9780413589507 (13). ["With illustrations and introduction first published … in 1985" (4). Includes "A Play and Its Politics: A Conversation between Harold Pinter and Nicholas Hern" (5-23).]
–––. One for the Road: With Production Photos by Ivan Kyncl and an Interview on the Play and Its Politics. New York: Grove Press, 1986. ISBN 0394623630 (10). ISBN 9780394623634 (13). ISBN 0394545753 (10). ISBN 9780394545752 (13). (Evergreen paperback ed.) ("A Play and Its Politics: A Conversation between Harold Pinter and Nicholas Hern" (7–23) is dated February 1985. Includes "Postscript", by Harold Pinter, dated May 1995.) [Parenthetical references in the text are to this edition of the play. As Pinter uses three spaced periods for pauses in his dialogue, editorial ellipses of three unspaced periods are herein placed within brackets.]
Rich, Frank. "Stage: Three by Pint(e)r". New York Times. The New York Times Company, 28 Apr. 1984. Web. 9 Feb. 2009.
External links
Main article: Harold Pinter#External links- One for the Road at HaroldPinter.org: The Official Website of the International Playwright Harold Pinter
Categories:- British plays
- 1984 plays
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