The Lover

There are two plays with this title:

1. The Lover is a 1962 one-act play by English playwright Harold Pinter (1930-2008) [1]. Pinter leads the audience to believe that there are three characters in the play: the wife, the husband and the lover. But the lover who comes to call in the afternoons is revealed to be the husband adopting a role. He plays the lover for her: she plays the whore for him. The play contrasts bourgeois domesticity with sexual yearning.

The play was first presented by Associated-Rediffusion Television, London, 28 March 1963.

The first stage production was at the Arts Theatre, London, 18 September 1963.

Published by Methuen in 1964.

2. The Lover by Spanish writer, poet, dramatist, and theatre director Gregorio Martinez Sierra [2] (1881-1947).

Performance history in South Africa

1943: The Lover (Martinez Sierra): Presented by the Repertory Theatre Society, later known as the Cape Town Repertory Theatre Society performed on 7 April 1943 in a double bill with The Pineapple Barrow.

1980: The Lover (Pinter): A Baxter Theatre Production was directed and designed by Ken Leach in a double bill with The Dumb Waiter, opening 25 January 1980, starring Richard Cox and Jacqui Singer.

1992: The Lover (Pinter): Lanon Prigge, Tamara Rabinowitz and Alasdair Gordon-Findlayson starred in the Rhodes University Drama Department Honours student production, directed by Julia Boltt, in September 1992.

Sources

Wikipedia [3].

NELM: [Collection: FLETCHER, Jill]: 2005. 75. 19. 61. (Martinez Sierra)

Theatre programme (Baxter), 1980.

Barrow, Brian & Williams-Short, Yvonne (eds.). 1988. Theatre Alive! The Baxter Story 1977-1987

Photographs of the cast (Rhodes production) held by NELM: [Collection: Rhodes University. Drama Department]: 2008. 51. 4. 8. 4. 3.

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