Pinter's People

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Comedy Closed 23 February 2007

Haymarket Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

Pinter's People - Sketches, Monologues and Two-Handers 1958 to 2002 by Harold Pinter

Pinter's People is a collection of thirteen sketches by Harold Pinter written between 1958 and 2002 and which particularly show case the (black) comedy in Harold Pinter's plays. Pinter's People in London features the comic actor and comedian Bill Bailey along with Sally Phillips, Kevin Eldon and Geraldine McNulty. They are directed by Sean Foley who has devised this show which has the support of the playwright - in fact Harold Pinter himself suggested the title.

Pinter's People are Trouble in the Works / The Black and White / Special Offer / That's Your Trouble / Request Stop / Night / The New World Order / Tess / Victoria Station / That's All / Last To Go / Precisely / Press Conference.

From 2 February to 24 March 2007 at London's Trafalgar Studios, Lee Evans is appearing in Harold Pinter's Dumb Waiter along with Jason Isaacs.

Bill Bailey is a stand up comedian and actor, his stage credits include his own show Part Troll while his television credits include Black Books and the panel show Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Sally Phillips' television credits include Green Wing and Jam and Jerusalem as well as the film Bridget Jones' Diary. Geraldine McNulty is probably best known for the television comedy series My Hero, her old TV credit include Ted and Alice, The Vicar of Dibley and Absolutely Fabulous while on stage she appeared in London's West End in the one woman play Betty.

"Aside from odd references to things such as threepenny bits, it's astonishing how undated the writing feels. And though they may look superficially like mainstream sketches don't be fooled. There is menace and imagination, pity and terror, in abundance. Trapped characters are given to outbursts of baffled, inexplicable anger, and their lives, however ordinary and trivial they may seem, lurch around existential voids. There is dignity amid the banality... Bill Bailey deserves every praise for reviving these old but never creaky sketches. Between them, the cast and the director, Sean Foley, understand precisely how Pinter's pauses are often comic, the funnier for being excruciatingly drawn out." The Sunday Times

"Those who feared that Harold Pinter, in his early days, was no more than a crude, thigh-slapping joker will have their worries thrown out. One of the great pleasures of the evening, which is made up of 14 sketches and performed by four actors, is that it is possible to see that, right from the beginning, Pinter was unmistakably himself. The sketches are sad as well as funny, sometimes sinister - light and dark... Sean Foley's production goes at a cracking pace... with never a dull moment." The Observer

"In Pinter's People, director Sean Foley gathers Pinter's sketches from 1959 to 2006 and plays them for laughs. A line-up of comedians - Bill Baily, Kevin Eldon, Geraldine McNulty and Sally Phillips - overact wildly, signalling every line with facefuls of expressions and armfuls of gestures, but the characters remain woefully unexplored and almost wilfully misunderstood." The Mail on Sunday