About
the Play:
Moonlight has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.
Moonlight is a full-length drama by Harold Pinter. Andy, an ailing, foul-mouthed patriarch, is
desperate for reconciliation with his two estranged sons. Haunted by
the ghostly presence of his dead daughter Bridget and the very real
presence of his irascible wife Bel, the dying Andy muses on guilt,
lost loves and parenthood, all the while knowing that the end is in
sight.
Moonlight is the story of a once visceral father on his
deathbed, looking over his life, his youth, loves, lusts and
betrayals of his wife. Andy, a dying civil servant, is desperate for
consolation from his family and spends his time railing against his
long-suffering wife Bel. They remember their past, in particular
their friendship with Maria, with whom they both had affairs.
Alongside them, Andy's unemployed sons act out a series of fiercely
high-powered mind-games, while daughter Bridget hovers over the
action, subtly suggesting that she was the victim of some terrible
childhood wrong. Harold Pinter's final full-length play is an
elegiac meditation on family, grief and mortality, shot through with
raucous wit.
Moonlight premiered in 1993 at the Almeida Theatre Off West
End in London and transferred to the Comedy Theatre in the West End.
Its US premiere was in 1995 at the Laura Pels Theatre off-Broadway in
New York City.
Cast: 2 female, 4 male, 1 girl
What people say:
"Although little-known, Harold
Pinter's Moonlight … is his
quintessential play. Along with familiar themes of grief, guilt and
infidelity, lies a preoccupation with power." — The
Guardian (London)
"In Moonlight,
Mr. Pinter is considering love and death in his own very oblique way,
in language that resonates with familiar Pinter syntax, in a
narrative whose ellipses have the effect of removing all action, all
climaxes, virtually all movement." — The New York
Times
"There is no playwright his
equal. He is the natural descendant of James Joyce, by way of Samuel
Beckett. Pinter works the language as a master pianist works the
keyboard. This is classical playwriting, make no mistake about it."
— New York Post
"A dark, elegiac play, studded
with brutally and swaggeringly funny jokes." — The
Sunday Times
(London)
About the Playwright:
Harold Pinter (1930-2008) was an English playwright,
screenwriter, actor, theatre director, poet, and Nobel laureate. He
wrote 29 plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker,
The Homecoming, and Betrayal, 15 dramatic sketches, 21
screenplays, as well as books of poetry and fiction, and directed 27
theatre productions. He continued to act under his own name, on stage
and screen. His genius was recognized within his lifetime as a
recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005 (the highest
honour available to any writer in the world), the Companion of Honour
for services to Literature, the Legion D'Honneur, the European
Theatre Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award and the Moliere D'Honneur
for lifetime achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of
Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, in addition to 18
other honorary degrees.