It’s common for the presence and reputation of a playwright to dip after death, with the luckiest getting a later rediscovery. But, since Harold Pinter’s obituary led the BBC TV evening news on Christmas Eve 2008, all of his full-length dramas have had major revivals in London or New York.
Stars attracted to the richly ambiguous parts that Pinter, an ex-actor himself, crafted included Timothy Spall as the passive-aggressive tramp in The Caretaker; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart as the duelling old men in No Man’s Land; Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz committing adultery backwards in Betrayal. Restagings of early plays – The Birthday Party, The Homecoming and The Hothouse – brought younger audiences to the author’s dark comic wordplay and power struggles through the smart casting of screen celebrities such as Gemma Chan, John Simm and Pearl Mackie.
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