Other Places

Other Places is a trilogy of plays by English playwright Harold Pinter (1930-2008) [1]: Family Voices (1980), Victoria Station (1982), and A Kind of Alaska (1982) - they are part of the "Memory Plays" [2], a series of short plays and sketches Pinter wrote between 1968 and 1982.

Published in Other places : three plays, by Harold Pinter. Methuen, 1982.

The original text

Family Voices [3] is a 1980 radio play for three voices - it exposes the story of a mother, son, and dead husband and father through a series of letters that the mother and son have written to one another and that each speaks aloud. The play is also performed live on stage as a "platform performance" with three actors speaking the three voices.

Victoria Station [4] is a 1982 short play for two actors and it consists of a radio dialogue between a minicab controller (or dispatcher) and a driver (#274) who is stopped by the side of "a dark park" in London, supposedly waiting further instructions.

A Kind of Alaska [5] is a 1982 one-act play for three actors, about a middle-aged woman who awakes out of a coma after thirty years.

Performance history in South Africa

1984: Staged by PACT in the State Theatre in Pretoria and in the Alexander Theatre in Johannesburg, directed by Bobby Heaney, with Graham Weir (Voice 1 in Family Voices), Shelagh Holliday (Voice 2 in Family Voices & Deborah in A Kind of Alaska)), Michael McCabe (Voice 3 in Family Voices & Controller in Victoria Station & Hornby in A Kind of Alaska), Frantz Dobrowsky (Driver in Victoria Station) and Jacqui Singer (Pauline in A Kind of Alaska).

Sources

PACT theatre programme, 1984.

PACT pamphlet Let Us Build a Heritage. 1984/85.

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