Synopsis
Other Places - Victoria Station & Family Voices & One For The Road & A Kind Of Alaska
Published by Dramatists Play Service
3 Male 3 Female
The driver, who says he has fallen in love with the passenger who is asleep (or perhaps dead) on his back seat, doesn't seem to know his own location, much less that of Victoria Station (2 men)
The second part of the program offers a choice: either Family Voices (which was used in the London production) or One For The Road (which was presented in New York)
Family Voices is a series of parallel monologues between a mother and son in the form of letters probably written but never mailed, in which the facade of a happy family gradually disintegrates into a cauldron of recrimination (2 men, 1 woman)
One For The Road, a powerful statement about the abuse of human rights by totalitarian governments, finds an unctuous and "civilized" interrogator humiliating the doomed members of a family who have become enemies of the state (2 men, 1 woman, 1 boy)
The final play, A Kind Of Alaska, is a masterly study of a middle-aged woman waking up from a coma induced by sleeping sickness after thirty years have passed. In her mind she is still 16, and her attempts to fathom the changed world into which she reemerges is not only poignant and emotionally charged but, in the end, devastatingly brilliant theatre as well (1 man, 2 women)
NOTE: If produced separately, A Kind Of Alaska may be presented only with another play written by Harold Pinter or with a companion piece approved by Mr Pinter. In the latter instance all requests must be approved in writing by the Play Service
Successfully produced in both London and New York, this brilliant triple bill finds the author at the top of his powers
" the writing does indeed have the same spare eloquence and that depth - charge laconic quality we associate with Pinter" ~ NY Post
"He was never less obscure than here, or more profoundly eloquent about the fragile joy of being alive" ~ London Daily Telegraph
" an extraordinary evening that shows Pinter's gift for pinning down the dream-like oddity of all waking existence" ~ The Guardian
" little gems of human isolation" ~ The Standard (London)