--- product_id: 62769018 title: "Harold Pinter Plays 1 (Contemporary Classics)" brand: "harold pinter" price: "£21.95" currency: GBP in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/62769018-harold-pinter-plays-1-contemporary-classics store_origin: GB region: United Kingdom --- # Harold Pinter Plays 1 (Contemporary Classics) **Brand:** harold pinter **Price:** £21.95 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Harold Pinter Plays 1 (Contemporary Classics) by harold pinter - **How much does it cost?** £21.95 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.uk](https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/62769018-harold-pinter-plays-1-contemporary-classics) ## Best For - harold pinter enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted harold pinter brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Harold Pinter Plays 1 (Contemporary Classics) ## Images ![Harold Pinter Plays 1 (Contemporary Classics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61OaYBioQdL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A wonderful night in Trafalgar! *by C***O on Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2013* a real masterpiece, The Hothouse, I mean. It was written more than 50 years ago, and it didn't loose any reference with our life. A real metaphor of power and the power of beaurocracy. It remind me to Orwell 1984. May I remind here a nice application of Kindle? During a week end in London (May 2013)with my wife, we saw that Hothouse was on stage at Trafalgar Studio Theater. We love Pinter, but we didn't know this play. I ordered it on my Kindle; I got it in one minute; I had the time to read it in the next hour; than we were to the theater enjoing the performance without loosing any subtlety of the text. Great!Carlo Erminero ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Terrific, funny series *by A***R on Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2016* There have been more than 110 Nobel laureates in Literature, but for the most part humor isn’t their distinguishing feature. Some do have occasional touches of humor in their writing -- Doris Lessing, Orhan Pamuk, Gabriel García Márquez and, in a leaden way, possibly Saul Bellow. But fewer than a handful have really made humor essential to their work. The most obvious is Dario Fo (1997), who proudly calls himself a clown; but little of his work has been translated into English, and that not always so well. Most poems by Wislawa Szymborska (1996) feature her wonderfully ironic sense of humor, but they're more likely to provoke a smile than laughter out loud. [Sorry her name is misspelt: Amazon's character set is limited.] And Samuel Beckett’s (1969) humor is inseparable from tragedy and peculiarly limited language.So it probably falls to Harold Pinter — a generation younger than Beckett, influenced by him, and ultimately his personal friend — to be the funniest Nobel laureate (2005), at least for readers of English. Pinter’s plays are often serious, or at least disturbing. His humor is often quite dark or sarcastic. But his plays are built with it -- it's fundamental to their structure. It’s more aggressive than Beckett’s, more overtly satirical, and sometimes purely playful or farcical, Pythonesque before Monty Python. (I defy anyone to read aloud “Trouble in the Works” in Vol. 2 of this series without cracking up the first few times through.) And while seeing a Pinter play performed is better than reading one, there is plenty on the printed page that’s entertaining and thought-provoking.For each of the past four years I’ve read one volume from this Faber series of Pinter plays over the New Year’s holiday. This series, especially with the 1997 edition of Vol. 3 and the 2012 edition of Vol. 4, is more complete than the so-called “complete works” from Grove Press. Each volume is prefaced by the text of a short speech Pinter gave that touches on some of the works in the book, but aside from some notes about the first two or three productions of each play there aren’t any endnotes or other critical or explanatory apparatus. I can’t say I connected with all of it; in particular “The Dwarfs” (1961, Vol. 2), a condensation for radio of a novel Pinter wrote in the 1950s, and with a key character eliminated, was obstinately opaque. But cycling through all his work this way helped me to start each year with laughter. It's a brief tradition that will be hard to replace. ### ⭐⭐ "A Slight Ache" Not Pinter's Best Effort *by J***Y on Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2009* In "A Slight Ache" (1958) Harold Pinter was still trying to get his sea legs, experimenting, trying things out, probing. In this effort he has only two speaking characters, Edward and Flora, and one mute character, The Matchseller. At breakfast the couple are having an Absurdist, inane conversation about prosaic matters such as the garden. It's often funny stuff. It turns out that a Matchseller has been standing for months outside in all kinds of nasty weather in the lane behind their house where there is no traffic. Edward has grown quite frightened of this person, and, of course, wants him gone. Flora, somehow attracted to the stranger, invites him in. He's dirty, smelly, and his matches are a sodden mess, but somehow she's sexually attracted by him. Edward prattles on to the man at great length and manages to convey little except the futility and meaninglessness of his (Edward's) own existence. The more he talks, the more vapid, superficial, and inconsequential his life seems. To Pinter identity, individuality is a very fragile thing. Does the Matchseller represent death, rebirth, fate, change, or basically nothingness. Pinter can be annoying, prickly, and also dull and boring. You may see echoes of Ionesco ("The Killer") and Beckett in this one. Prior to this Pinter had written "The Room," "The Birthday Party" and "The Dumbwaiter." This play along with others has that underlying sense of menace, an impending disaster, but it is less interesting and even more claustrophobic than the others. Keep your eye out for the Absurdist swap, sometimes a weird switcheroo. If this were the only play on a theater bill, I would advise customers not to pay too much for their tickets and to expect periods of the boring doldrums. I know and appreciate my Pinter, but this one is not one of his better outings. One of Pinter's goals in these early plays was to depersonalize his characters, suck the humanity out of them, make them automatons. They had certain traits, but they were portrayed as types, templates rather than individuals, real people. They acted robotically, lacked spirituality, were puppets, and merely existed. As theatergoers you either accepted this often comic depersonalization, or you rejected it. Of course a movement like the Theater of the Absurd was bound to gradually lose its appeal because it drained humanity and individuality from the characters. The audience went on to other movements or back to naturalism and realism. Look elsewhere on Amazon for my reviews of other titles in this collection. ## Frequently Bought Together - Plays 1: The Birthday Party, The Room, The Dumb Waiter, A Slight Ache, The Hothouse, A Night Out, The Black and White, The Examina,Vol. 1 (Faber Contemporary Classics) - Plays:2 The Caretaker .Night School. The Dwarfs. The Collection. The Lover. Night School . Trouble in the works. The black and white request stop. Last to go. Special Offer - Harold Pinter Plays 3: The Homecoming; Old Times; No Man’s Land --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/62769018-harold-pinter-plays-1-contemporary-classics](https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/62769018-harold-pinter-plays-1-contemporary-classics) --- *Product available on Desertcart United Kingdom* *Store origin: GB* *Last updated: 2026-05-19*