One for the Road was first performed at the Lyric Theatre Studio, Hammersmith, in March 1984, directed by Pinter himself. The play is short — four scenes, approximately twenty minutes — and marks the beginning of Pinter’s explicitly political late period. A state official named Nicolas interrogates a man, a woman, and a child — a family arrested for unspecified crimes against the state. Nicolas is charming, cultivated, and terrifying: he drinks whisky, discusses poetry, and casually reveals that his men have raped the woman and will probably kill the child.
The play draws on Pinter’s increasing engagement with political causes — particularly his concern with state torture and political imprisonment in Turkey, Latin America, and elsewhere. But it uses the dramatic methods he had developed over twenty-five years of theater: the menace, the silences, the power exercised through language, the refusal to explain or contextualize. Nicolas never specifies what the family has done; the regime he serves is never named; the country is never identified. This universality is the play’s strength — it is about all state violence, not any particular instance of it.
One for the Road was controversial: some critics felt that Pinter’s move toward explicit politics betrayed his earlier theatrical subtlety, that the moral clarity of the play was incompatible with the ambiguity that had made his earlier work so powerful. Others argued that the political plays were the natural extension of his lifelong concern with power, domination, and the use of language as a weapon.
Collecting One for the Road
First edition (Methuen, London, 1984): Wrappers (paperback original).
Market values:
- First edition: $20–$50
- Signed copies: $75–$200