''The Lover'' is a 1962

one-act play A one-act play is a play that has only one act, as distinct from plays that occur over several acts. One-act plays may consist of one or more scenes. The 20-40 minute play has emerged as a popular subgenre of the one-act play, especially in writi ...

Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A List of Nobel laureates in Literature, Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramat ...

, originally written for television, but subsequently performed on stage. The play contrasts

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

domesticity with sexual yearning. As with the drama of

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

, some of Pinter's plays support "serious" and "

comic a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicat ...

" interpretations; ''The Lover'' has been staged successfully both as an ironic comedy on the one hand and as a nervy drama on the other. As is often the case with Pinter, the play probably contains both.

Plot

Pinter leads the audience to believe that there are four characters in the play: the wife, the husband, the wife's lover and the husband's whore. But the lover who comes to call in the afternoons is revealed to be the husband adopting a role. He plays the lover for her: she plays the whore for him. As the play goes on the man (first as the lover and then as the husband) expresses a wish to stop the pretend adultery, to the dismay of the woman. Finally, the husband suddenly switches back to the role of the lover (he switched also before it)

Original production

The play originally premiered in a 60 minute TV production directed by Joan Kemp-Welch for

Associated-Rediffusion Associated-Rediffusion, later Rediffusion London, was the British ITV franchise holder for London and parts of the surrounding counties, on weekdays between 22 September 1955 and 29 July 1968. It was the first ITA franchisee to go on air, ...

, transmitted by ITV on 28 March 1963. *Husband/Lover - Alan Badel *Wife/Mistress -

Vivien Merchant Ada Brand Thomson (22 July 1929 – 3 October 1982), known professionally as Vivien Merchant, was an English actress. She began her career in 1942, and became known for dramatic roles on stage and in films. In 1956 she married the playwright Ha ...

*Milkman -

Michael Forrest Michael Forrest (July 1932 – 21 December 2004) was a Welsh television actor. He appeared in many British television series and films, which include ''Sir Francis Drake (TV series), Sir Francis Drake'', ''Z-Cars'', ''Danger Man'', ''The Saint ...

Original London stage production

It opened at the

Arts Theatre The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It opened on April 20, 1927. History It opened on 20 April 1927 as a members-only club for the performance of unlicensed plays, thus avoiding theatre cen ...

on 18 September 1963 in a production by the author, as part of a double bill with his play ''The Dwarfs''; and closed on 5 October. *Richard -

Scott Forbes Conrad Scott Forbes (11 September 1920 – 25 February 1997), popularly known as Scott Forbes, was a British film and television actor and screenwriter. In his later career as a screenwriter, he was credited as C. Scott Forbes. Early year ...

*Sarah - Vivien Merchant *John - Michael Forrest ;Critical reception The ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'' wrote "The little play works simply beautifully, like a perfectly adjusted piece of miniature machinery, except that machinery is dead and this play is scintillating alive."

References

External links

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The Lover at Spanish Version Essay 1962 plays 1963 television plays Plays by Harold Pinter {{1960s-play-stub