Quote • PINTER and NO MAN’S LAND • Janet Street-Porter

Screenshot from Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize lecture, 27 December 2005 [Wikipedia]

‘No Man’s Land is a monumental waste of talent. [The play] is more than 30 years old and hasn’t worn well…. you leave the theatre repeating just two words: “what?” and “why?”. What on earth was it about and why do talented actors feel compelled to wrestle with Pinter? Keith Allen in The Homecoming, Eileen Atkins in The Birthday Party – I must have sat through half a dozen over a decade. Dingy living rooms. Landladies putting on the kettle at a snail’s pace. Interminable silences. Cryptic comments. And yet nearly every critic treats this stuff like the work of a demi-god. Is Pinter sacrosanct? Be honest – he’s a bore.’

Janet Street-Porter in The Independent on Sunday, 12 October 2008.

Originally published on R&V 17-10-08