Dinner Discussion of Harold Pinter’s “Moonlight”

At our May Footlights’ discussion of Design for Living, Akiva Fox, Shakespeare Theatre Company Literary Associate, made the provocative suggestion that Noël Coward’s dialogue was the precursor to Harold Pinter’s. Thinking of Coward’s witty repartee as opposed to Pinter’s tension-filled pauses, most of us were surprised, if not downright skeptical.

Now we can consider Pinter’s dialogue anew. On Tuesday, September 15, Footlights will discuss Moonlight, Pinter’s 1993 play. We will be joined by Sarah Wallace, associate literary manager/dramaturg at Studio Theatre.

Many critics have given us their take on Pinter. For example, Margo Jefferson (1995): “As a playwright, Harold Pinter runs the gamut from brilliant to accomplished. He inherited Beckett’s prose of despair — minimalist and starkly cadenced — took it into the living rooms and bedrooms of England, and used it to make dramas of family treachery, class menace and psychological terrorism.”