SOURCE: Review of The Caretaker, in The Hudson Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring, 1961, pp. 94-5.

In the following essay, Donoghue strongly objects to the negative vision of life he sees conveyed in Pinter's plays.

Think of Harold Pinter. His published plays are The Room, The Dumb Waiter, The Birthday Party (all 1957) and The Caretaker (1959). In The Room Rose Hudd goes blind when her husband kicks and batters a blind negro who has insinuated himself into their lives with the admonition, “Come home, Sal.” In The Dumb Waiter two gunmen, Gus and Ben, kill time in a basement room while waiting for their instructions; an envelope slides under the door, culinary orders arrive by dumb waiter, the final instruction is that Ben will kill Gus. In The Birthday Party two lodgers, Goldberg and McCann, interrogate and attack a third, Stanley Webber, on his birthday; at the birthday party, playing blind-man's-buff...