When Harold met Ronald

Scene: Harold Pinter's study in west London. Pinter, who has recently recovered from cancer (and looks remarkably well on it), is seated on a leather rocking chair; beside him, on a matching swivel chair, is Ronald Harwood, who is both playwright and chairman of the Royal Society of Literature. The two have been friends since 1953, when they met as young actors in Sir Donald Wolfit's theatre company.

Ronald Harwood: We thought it would be interesting to talk about the kind of theatre that you and I entered in the Fifties, and the kind of theatre it is now. What was the first play you saw?

Harold Pinter: King Lear, at the People's Palace, Mile End.

RH: Wolfit's?

HP: Yes. I was staggered by that: I saw it six times, in various venues, before I joined the company. Not a bad start.

RH: Mine was less auspicious – The Love of Four Colonels. But what about coming into the West End and seeing your first plays there – can you remember what those were?

HP: I have a feeling that I went with my parents to see Death of a Salesman.

RH: And what was the impression of that?

HP: Very strong, very powerful. We also went to the Hackney Empire, and saw a lot of variety: Max Miller. I saw Jack Benny too, at the Palladium.

RH: You were caught up in the theatre quite young, as I was – you wanted to be an actor?

HP: Not really. I did go to Rada when I was 18, and I suppose I did decide at the time that there was nothing else I could possibly do to earn a living.

RH: But you were writing then?

HP: I was writing poetry. I was in weekly rep throughout the Fifties, and that's all gone now, thank goodness – because it was very tough going.

RH: I felt it was a good training.

HP: It was quite fun – but you couldn't do it for ever. The difference also was that there was almost no fringe theatre in the country. Two of the most remarkable productions I've seen recently were Saint's Day [by John Whiting] at the Orange Tree in Richmond and a 14th-century play called Death and the Ploughman at the Gate: a remarkable work – superbly directed too.

RH: Can we talk about John Whiting? The kind of play he wrote must have been totally out of the norm at the time: in the West End they were doing Rattigan, Coward –

HP: – Priestley –

RH: – and then this came along. Had you heard of Saint's Day?

HP: Yes – I heard that it had been done, but had been much abused. It lasted a very short time. It received the worst reviews of any play until The Birthday Party. It caused more or less an uproar.

RH: Do you know why it did?

HP: People just thought it was totally incomprehensible.

RH: There was something I thought was very fascinating about it, in that some of the technical things – overlapping dialogue, going off at tangents – was really laying the ground for something we're now very used to, because of you and Beckett and so on. Did you feel that?

HP: Watching it confirmed for me that it was a truly original piece of work. Nobody else had written like that – nobody. I thought it really thrilling.

RH: It was marvellous writing, of a very high order. But here's the interesting thing: now that's done on the fringe. When we were starting out there were things called Sunday-night performances, when the theatre was given to new playwrights or a group of actors who wanted to do a play – but it was not on the scale of the fringe.

HP: The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs – they did some great stuff up there: Heathcote Williams's AC/DC. And there's been one constant over all these years, which must be recognised and applauded, and that is the Royal Court itself. It's still going very, very well.

RH: You got The Birthday Party put on through a West End management at the Lyric Hammersmith, didn't you?

HP: Yes.

RH: Nowadays an avant-garde writer would probably only be able to do the Royal Court or a fringe theatre – I guess there's the Donmar, the Hampstead Theatre Club...

HP: The Donmar can hardly be called fringe: it's one of the most fashionable theatres. All those American film stars – we didn't have them in those days. That I think is a really profound change, because it's all about celebrity.

RH: You're quite right. Of course there were starry things in the West End when we were starting out – Binkie Beaumont's plays always had stars; but they were at least leading actors: Gielgud, Coward, Margaret Leighton, Dame Edith Evans. Actors didn't do television because it was beneath them: now we can't cast plays in the theatre because they've got series all the time.

There's another aspect that I want to try out on you. Why aren't there more women playwrights? Why don't they get their plays on? Timberlake Wertenbaker says that there is discrimination against them. I find that unbelievable myself, because when a theatre manager gets a play, he's not going to say, 'It's by Daisy Jones, I'm not going to read this.' They're all hungry for material. Has anyone complained to you about this?

HP: Women never complain to me.

RH: Honestly, Harold...

HP: I'm surprised at that.

RH: The other thing is that there's less theatre now in the mainstream of the West End. I think there were probably 10 or 15 more theatres than there are now – and now they do far more musicals.

HP: So does the National Theatre.

RH: Do you think that they don't have enough money and therefore have to do musicals? Or do you think it's just populist theatre?

HP: I think so. You have My Fair Lady running at the National for weeks and weeks and weeks – it's very, very dubious. It's not very healthy.

RH: Where does this celebrity thing come from? With this revival they're planning now of The Dresser – they don't trust the play at all: they've got to get two stars. They've got to take out an insurance policy.

HP: That's the problem with getting any damned play on in the mainstream theatre – the star question. I think there's something deeply pusillanimous about managements these days.

RH: There's one last area – the critics. I wondered what you felt about the critical establishment now, as opposed to when you were coming into the theatre.

HP: I think there are very, very few enlightened and perceptive critics at any time: Harold Hobson, Tynan... where Tynan was exceptional was that he did know something about acting. Most critics know absolutely nothing about acting. They're fooled time and time again by exhibitionism. I think some of our leading actresses – I won't dream of mentioning names – are nothing more than muggers. But their performances are applauded by the critics and the public – they get standing ovations, and they sell out, but they're fundamentally useless. It's an enormous con trick, in which both the audience and the critics are complicit.

RH: You and I both know from having plays done abroad, the seriousness of – for example – French critics: it's quite a different approach.

HP: I think it applies to a lot of continental countries (laughs ruefully). They're just more serious about the theatre.

The full version of this conversation is published in the Royal Society of Literature's new magazine 'RSL'