The Room (play)
| The Room | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Harold Pinter |
| Characters | Bert Hudd Rose Mr. Kidd Mr. Sands Mrs. Sands Riley |
| Date premiered | May 1957 |
| Place premiered |
University of Bristol UK |
| Original language | English |
| Genre |
Drama (Tragicomedy, Comedy of menace) |
| Setting | A room in a large house |
| Official site | |
The Room is Harold Pinter's first play, written and first produced in 1957. Considered by critics the earliest example of Pinter's "comedy of menace", this play has strong similarities to Pinter's second play, The Birthday Party, including features considered hallmarks of Pinter's early work and of the so-called Pinteresque: dialogue that is comically familiar and yet disturbingly unfamiliar, simultaneously or alternatingly both mundane and frightening; subtle yet contradictory and ambiguous characterizations; a comic yet menacing mood characteristic of mid-twentieth-century English tragicomedy; a plot featuring reversals and surprises that can be both funny and emotionally moving; and an unconventional ending that leaves at least some questions unresolved.
Pinter has confirmed that his visit, in the summer of 1955, to the "broken-down room" of Quentin Crisp, located in Chelsea's Beaufort Street (now renovated and part of a "smart building"), inspired his writing The Room, "set in 'a snug, stuffy rather down-at-heel bedsit with a gas fire and cooking facilities'." The bedsit is located in an equally rundown rooming house which, like that of Pinter's next play, The Birthday Party, becomes the scene of a visitation by apparent strangers. Though the single-dwelling two-story house in the later play is in an unidentified "seaside town", and it is purportedly a bed and breakfast-type rooming house run by a childless middle-aged married couple, the building in which Rose and Bert Hudd inhabit their "room" is a multi-dwelling rooming house of more than two stories, and, while Rose accepts being addressed as "Mrs. Hudd", Bert Hudd and she may not actually be legally married to each other, which may be a factor leading to her defensiveness throughout the play.
The play opens with Rose having a "one-person dialog" with her husband Bert, who remains silent throughout the whole scene, while serving him a breakfast fry-up, although the scene appears to occur around evening. Rose talks mostly about the cold weather and keeps comparing the cosy, warm room to the dark, damp basement and to the cold weather outside. She creates a sense of uneasiness by the way she talks and acts, always moving from one place to another in the room, even while sitting, she sits in a rocking chair and rocks. Her speech is filled with many quick subject changes and asks her husband questions, yet answers them herself.
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