Overview

THE STORY: The play is concerned with three young men, Len, Pete and Mark, and the scene of action shifts back and forth between Len's house and Mark's. Sometimes all three come together, sometimes only two, and often Len is on stage alone. There are conversations and soliloquies filled with the brilliant convolutions of thought, the sudden flashes of truth that distinguish Pinter's unique style, with the mood ranging from calm introspection to explosive outpouring. Much of what is said hints at deeper thoughts left unspoken, and the sense of horror and alienation that often emerges is a searing indictment of our life and times. We meet, we talk, we tear at each other, but our insularity is seldom penetrated. We are together but alone, as though life were a mirror that reflects only our own image. But there is humor too, again distinctively Pinteresque in its startling swings from the direct to the illusive, and, in the end, there is a promise of perfectibility in the inescapable fact of change that dominates all.

Keywords

• Friendship