The Tour of Ireland with The Anew McMaster repertory company (1951-52)
 
 
Harold Pinter (standing) as Iago with Anew McMaster as Othello

"I toured Ireland with Mac for about two years in the early 1950s. He advertised in The Stage for actors for a Shakespeare tour of the country. I sent him a photograph and went to see him in a flat near Willesden Junction [...] He offered me six pounds a week, said I could get digs for twenty-five shillings at the most, told me how cheap cigarettes were and that I could play Horatio, Bassanio and Cassio. It was my first proper job on the stage."
Harold Pinter, 'Mac' in Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948 - 1998, Faber and Faber, 1998, p27.

"We played in Cork in a theatre that burned down, called the Cork Opera House, a wonderful theatre. It had a backstage bar, so actors could pop in and have a drink while the show was running. We were doing Lady Windermere's Fan, and I was playing Lord Windermere. Joe Nolan came on one night wearing a top hat, tails, white tie, monocle, cloak and carrying a silver walking stick; in other words, dressed to the nines. He walked up to me on stage, in front of the full house, and said in a very, very quiet voice, under his breath, "I'm totally pissed, say something!" I said, "Ah! Lord whatever-his-name-was, you've been I should imagine to the Garrick." Harold Pinter to Mel Gussow, Conversations with Pinter, Nick Hern, 1994, p.110.

 
 
Harold Pinter as Sir John Chiltern in An Ideal Husband
Roles played:
Charles the Wrestler in As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Horatio in Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Edgar and Edmund in King Lear by William Shakespeare
Macduff in Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Cassio and Iago in Othello by William Shakespeare
Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Creon in Oedipus by Sophocles
Sir Robert Chiltern in An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
Lord Windermere in Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde
John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
 
         
The Drama in April        
     
So March has become a museum,    
And the April curtains move.    
I travel the vacant gallery    
To the last seat.    
In the spring decor    
The actors pitch tents,    
In a beak of light    
Begin their play.    
     
Their cries in the powdered dark    
Assemble in mourning over    
Ambassadors from the wings.    
And objects and props in the rain    
Are the ash of the house    
And the grave unnumbered stones    
In the green.    
     
I move to the interval,    
Done with this repertory.    
     
 
Harold Pinter, 'The Drama in April' (1952), in Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948 - 1998, Faber and Faber, 1998, p.148.
         
 
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