The play, which closed with disastrous reviews after one week, dealt in a Kafkaeque manner with an apparently ordinary man who is threatened by strangers for an unknown reason. He tries to run away but is tracked down. Although most reviewers were hostile, Pinter produced in rapid succession the body of work which made him the master of 'the comedy of menance.'
"Pinter's dialogue is as tightly - perhaps more tightly - controlled than verse. Every syllable, every inflection, the succession of long and short sounds, words and sentences, is calculated to nicety. And precisely the repetitiousness, the discontinuity, the circularity of ordinary vernacular speech are here used as formal elements with which the poet can compose his linguistic ballet." (Martin Esslin in The People Wound, 1970)
Pinter's major plays are usually set in a single room, whose occupants are threatened by forces or people whose precise intentions neither the characters nor the audience can define. Usually his characters are engaged in a struggle for survival or identity. Pinter refuses to provide rational justifications for action, but offers existential glimpses of bizarre or terrible moments in people's lives. In MONOLOGUE (1973) and NO MAN'S LAND (1975) the characters use words as their weapons in their struggles, not only for survival but also for sanity. ASTON - You said you wanted me to get you up. DAVIES - What for?
ASTON - You said you were thinking of going to Sidcup. DAVIES - Ay, that'd be a good thing, if I got there. ASTON - Doesn't look like much of a day. DAVIES - Ay, well, that's shot it, en't it?
(from The Caretaker)
In 1960 Pinter wrote THE DUMB WAITER. With his second full-length play, THE CARETAKER (1960), Pinter made his reputation as a major modern talent. It was followed by A SLIGHT ACHE (1961), THE COLLECTION (1962), THE DWARFS (1963), THE LOVER (1963) and THE HOMECOMING (1965), the story of an estranged son who brings his wife home to meet his family, perhaps the most enigmatic of all his works. It won a Tony Award, the Whitebread Anglo-American Theater Award, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Although Pinter has told in an interview in 1966, that he never has written any part for any actor, his wife Vivien Merchant, frequently appeared in his plays. In the 1960s he also directed several of his dramas. After BETRAYAL (1978) Pinter wrote no new full-length plays until MOONLIGHT (1994). Short plays include A KIND OF ALASKA (1982), inspired by the case histories in Oliver Sack's Awakenings (1973).