[2] Susan Harris Smith observes:The term "Pinteresque" has had an established place in the English language for almost thirty years.
The OED defines it as "of or relating to the British playwright, Harold Pinter, or his works"; thus, like a snake swallowing its own tail the definition forms the impenetrable logic of a closed circle and begs the tricky question [sic] of what the word specifically means.
... Pinter's plays are typically characterized by implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses.
"[3] The Swedish Academy defines characteristics of the Pinteresque in greater detail: Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles.
Pinter's drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theatre, but has later more aptly been characterised as 'comedy of menace', a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations.
In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence.
Over the years Pinter himself has "always been very dismissive when people have talked about languages and silences and situations as being 'Pinteresque'," observes Kirsty Wark in their interview on Newsnight Review broadcast on 23 June 2006; she wonders, "Will you finally acknowledge there is such a thing as a 'Pinteresque' moment?"
Once asked what his plays are about, Pinter lobbed back a phrase "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet", which he regrets has been taken seriously and applied in popular criticism: Once many years ago, I found myself engaged uneasily in a public discussion on theatre.
[4] Despite Pinter's protestations to the contrary, many reviewers and other critics consider the remark, though facetious, an apt description of his plays.
But if what I understand the word menace to mean is certain elements that I have employed in the past in the shape of a particular play, then I don't think it's worthy of much more exploration.
I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves.
[6]In his "Presentation Speech" of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature to Harold Pinter, in absentia, Swedish writer Per Wästberg, Member of the Swedish Academy and Chairman of its Nobel Committee, observes: "The abyss under chat, the unwillingness to communicate other than superficially, the need to rule and mislead, the suffocating sensation of accidents bubbling under the quotidian, the nervous perception that a dangerous story has been censored – all this vibrates through Pinter's drama."
Actors and directors often find Pinter's "pauses and silences" to be daunting elements of performing his plays, leading to much discussion of them in theatrical and dramatic criticism, and actors who have worked with Pinter in rehearsals have "reported that he regretted ever starting to write 'Pause' as a stage direction, because it often leads to portentous overacting" (Jacobson).
Speaking about their experiences of working with Pinter in rehearsing director Carey Perloff's 1989 double bill of The Birthday Party and Mountain Language (for Classic Stage Company), American actors David Strathairn and Peter Riegert agreed with Jean Stapleton that "Pinter's comments ... 'freed' the cast from feeling reverential about his pauses," and, while Strathairn "believes pauses can be overdone," he also "thinks Pinter's are distinctive: 'The natural ones always seem to be right where he wrote them.
He wanted them honored, she said, but not as 'these long, heavy, psychological pauses, where people look at each other filled with pregnant meaning' " (Jacobson).
He maintains that while others detected disturbing undertones, he merely intended basic stage directions" in writing "pause" and "silence".
Quoting J. Barry Lewis, the director of a recent production of Betrayal, by Palm Beach Dramaworks, Lisa Cohen observes that Pinter has "even entered popular culture with what is called 'the Pinter pause,' a term that describes ... those silent moments 'filled with unspoken dialogue' that occur throughout his plays.
"[7] Allusions to "the Pinteresque" and to specific characteristics of Pinter's works and, more recently, to his politics pervade Anglo-American popular culture (OED; Susan Harris Smith; mass media accounts, as cited above).
But scholars and other critical reviewers consider the reversed structure a fully integrated ingenious stylistic means of heightening multiple kinds of ironies energising Betrayal's comedic wit, its cumulative poignancy, and its ultimate emotional impact on audiences, and the play has been produced throughout the United States, Britain, and parts of the rest of the world with increasing frequency.
[11] A character in the fourth episode of the second season of Dawson's Creek, "Tamara's Return" (28 Oct 1998), alludes to Pinter's so-called "sub-textual" use of silence as "a classic 'Pinter' moment".
Also illustrating the frequent allusions to Pinter's "silences" in commentaries about others' work, in a book review of Nick Hornby's "debut teenage novel" Slam (Penguin Books), Janet Christie observes hyperbolically that Hornby is "spot-on with the way a conversation with a teenage boy contains more meaningful silences than Harold Pinter's entire oeuvre ...." Pinteresque, adj.
as n. Pinter's plays are typically characterised by implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses.