GENEVA ENGLISH DRAMA SOCIETY

Sunday 23 April, 2006, at 17h30

In the congenial surroundings of the Château de Prangins (between Nyon and Gland), which also houses the Swiss National Museum

AN EVENING WITH HAROLD PINTER

British playwright Harold Pinter received The Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

The evening begins with a PLAYREADING of THE DUMB WAITER. The play is set in the basement kitchen of a deserted roominghouse, where eccentric hit men Gus and Ben wait impatiently for instructions on their next job. Unfortunately for them, their predicament takes a bizarre turn as unsettling messages are received from the presumably abandoned floors above. The play combines comedy, suspense and Pinter's own brand of ambiguity.

The second presentation of the evening will be a revival of GEDS award-winning PRODUCTION of ONE FOR THE ROAD. Described as "a disturbing and brilliantly-controlled little masterpiece" when it opened in London in 1984, this study of a torturer and the family he victimizes, was written following a visit to Turkey, as a reaction to the repression there of the Kurds. More defined in its purpose than many of his plays, it sets out to bring home to audiences the real, living horror of this ugly aspect of political upheaval; to get through the comfortable "it can't happen here, it can't happen to me" mentality. A (relatively) ordinary family is caught up in a personal nightmare ... it could be anywhere, even here.