SOURCE: Greer, Herb. “Down and Out in London.” National Review 49, no. 12 (30 June 1997): 52-3.

In the following essay, Greer offers a brief, negative assessment of Pinter's career and reputation as a dramatist.

The London theater has been passing through a persistent scarcity of good new plays. A prominent symptom was Harold Pinter's latest gnomic, and incredibly tedious, Ashes to Ashes. It quickly expired in the West End, leaving the English stage hungrier than it has been for some time. As always, this pinched condition has provoked a scattering of hopeful revivals, including a good one of Pinter's The Homecoming. The startling contrast with Ashes to Ashes showed how far Pinter has fallen away from the genuine promise of his early work.

From the time when I first saw two of his one-act plays in a North London hall in the Fifties, it was clear that Pinter's flair as a...