HAROLD PINTER - Joshua Ruebl

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RICHARD: Delicately. We discuss you as we would play an antique music box. We play it for our titillation, whenever desired. Pause. SARAH: I can’t pretend the picture gives me great pleasure. RICHARD: It wasn’t intended to. The pleasure is mine. SARAH: Yes, I see that of course. RICHARD: (Sitting on the bed.) Surely your own afternoon pleasures are sufficient for you, aren’t they? You don’t expect extra pleasure from my pastimes, do you? SARAH: No, not at all. RICHARD: Then why all the questions? SARAH: Well, it was you who started it. Asking me so many questions about...my side of it. You don’t normally do that. RICHARD: Objective curiosity, that’s all. (Pinter pgs. 170-171) In this exchange, it seems as though Sarah and Richard have reconciled their need to find sexual gratification outside the confines of marriage. As Sarah remarks before bedtime “I think things are perfectly balanced, Richard,” (Pinter, pg. 173) the audience is set up for a surprise. The next morning after Richard leaves for work, Sarah gets ready to meet her lover. The doorbell rings and the milkman John answers. This character, put in to have a third character in the program, acts as a red herring to set the stage for a twist in the play. The milkman’s appearance according to Cahn “suggests the blandness of Sarah’s existence outside her life with Richard.” (Cahn, pg. 46.) This scene also illustrates the vulnerability of Sarah’s home life in her secluded house. The milkman’s 8
question “Cream?” can be read as a sexual double entendre, and sets the tableau with the threatening ambience. The milkman’s come-ons represent “life outside her marriage (in which) Sarah must be demure and accept the milkman’s attitude which borders on insolence. Only with Richard can Sarah release her more passionate, more powerful aspect. Thus we are again reminded that her marital arrangement satisfies her.” (Cahn, pg 46.) After the milkman leaves, the doorbell rings again. Sarah opens it, and it is Richard, wearing a suede jacket and no tie, his outfit changed from before. Richard goes to the cabinet, pulls out a bongo drum, and proceeds to engage Sarah in an erotic game. It is obvious at this point that Richard is the lover as Sarah calls him by the name of “Max.” After playing with the drum together on the chaise lounge, Richard plays at being both a sexual aggressor in a park and then after Sarah fights him off, plays at being a gentle park-keeper. Then as part of the game he switches from the park-keeper back to the aggressor. At this point he takes Sarah underneath the table and performs sexual acts with her. All the stage directions in this section of the script are highly ritualized, the pauses suggesting an almost rehearsed reaction between Richard and Sarah as characters. As in much of absurdist drama such as the works of Jean Genet, characters play at being other characters, adding many layers to the actor’s performance. This heightens the language and the mood and adds another ritualized element for the actors who take part in it. It is as though the characters of Richard and Sarah are like a primordial couple, playing a game of power and submission. 9
Page 1 and 2: Rituals of Gender and Power in the
Page 3 and 4: of Post-Modernism and the kind of p
Page 5 and 6: seems to be in balance: husband and
Page 7: play. Within these conflicts over c
Page 11 and 12: servant, power and submission, deve
Page 13 and 14: himself. Sarah ignores him, retaini
Page 15 and 16: internal struggle for both intimacy
Page 17 and 18: This play represents a change in at
Page 19 and 20: these, along with the card, particu
Page 21 and 22: us all happy. We’d take it in tur
Page 23 and 24: ealism that borders on the surreal.
Page 25 and 26: RUTH: I won’t go far. I’ll come
Page 27 and 28: “Well, to sum up everything was i
Page 29 and 30: Jewish heritage, and Ruth, a gentil
Page 31 and 32: contentment, an image mocked throug
Page 33 and 34: Oedipal phase (in which the young c
Page 35 and 36: that she is back in her own environ
Page 37 and 38: model for the body.” (Pinter, pg.
Page 39 and 40: due to her role in the patriarchal
Page 41 and 42: Ruth as prostitute is all part of a
Page 43 and 44: name means ‘of the night.’ Haro
Page 45 and 46: Stella and Sarah in his earlier wor
Page 47 and 48: BIBLIOGRAPY Almansi, G. and S. Hend
Page 49 and 50: Durham: Duke University Press, 1990

HAROLD PINTER - Joshua Ruebl

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