David Newman, Manchester
Considering Harold Pinter's fanaticism about cricket, isn't it rather surprising he's never written a play that's set at a cricket match or has a cricket player as one of his characters? After all, there are enough Pinteresque pauses in a game of cricket to satisfy even Harold Pinter.

Michael Billington
Pinter loves cricket and indeed lives for cricket and puts more energy into running a cricket team, The Gaieties, than he does into almost anything else. There is a cricket match in one of his films, Accident and it's actually extremely important in the context of that movie. I think the practical problem is obvious, how do you put cricket onto the stage, because it requires 11 fielders and a couple of batsmen and a couple of umpires? I think Pinter is too rough to try and put the game physically onto the stage. But don't forget the plays are shot through with references to cricket. One of the great lines in The Birthday Party, when Goldberg and McCann are interrogating Stanley, "Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?" and in No Man's Land there's a lot of references to an unseen female character and someone asks "How does she come off the wicket... does she google?" So if you trace cricket language through Pinter's plays you'll find there's quite a lot.

Nicholas Howard, Australia
Michael, would you say that the essence of Pinter's characters, as compared to those of radical playwrights who preceded him (Pirandello and Beckett), is that instead of just being strangers to others, they are also strangers to themselves?

Michael Billington
I think your observation is spot on. I think Pinter's characters are strangers to themselves and if you analyse some of the protagonists you can see this. Stanley in The Birthday Party is in many ways a persecuted figure who's hidden himself away but he himself could not explain his actions and does not explain his actions, he just feels a sense of alienation. Davies in The Caretaker is a man who's lived on the margins of life and is therefore suspicious and wary of everyone around him but lacks a sense of definition and it's very interesting how that character keeps changing his persona depending on who he's with. He even has two names - he could be Davies, he could be Jenkins and he doesn't know who he is until he gets his papers which are down in Sidcup.

I think your point is just, I suppose the point Pinter is making is that this applies to many of us. That we have a role in society, we have jobs, we have family relationships, we have friends. But when the door closes at night and we are left alone in a room, do we actually know essentially who we are? Or do we go through the day putting on a series of performances, a series of masks and adopting a different series of personae and I think Pinter would say that we do. That is why, when he's asked to explain his characters he never will and he never can because there is something in them that lies beyond rational explanation.

A Newman, Lancashire
Why is Pinter's work often referred to as difficult?

Michael Billington
The strange fact is that critics often refer to Pinter as difficult and yet audiences seem to have an intuitive understanding as to what these plays are about. The classic case for me was with early Pinter when critics were complaining that The Birthday Party was impenetrable and even The Caretaker was obscure. And at the same plays like The Lover were being shown on ITV on a Sunday night and capturing audiences of millions.

The plays are difficult only so far as that they allow the spectator or the reader to deduce what the plays are about. Pinter's plays do not come supplied with easy messages or easy solutions, they allow us the dignity of deciding what they're getting at. But I think when you see them performed the plays become alive and understandable. These plays are both accessible and open and at the same time available to an infinite number of meanings.

continued: Joe Orton, Beckett and that weasel

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