Night (sketch) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Alastair Macaulay, chief dance critic for the New York Times, reviewed the 2002 National Theatre production of Pinter's Sketches while still drama critic for the London Financial Times; in this portion of his review of the whole program reprinted on Pinter's official website, he writes:

1969 Night is beautifully acted by Douglas Hodge and Catherine McCormack. He recalls that the first time he held her was on a bridge; he recalls holding her breasts in his hands. She recalls no bridge, she recalls a different place, she recalls how he took her hand and gently stroked it. Has anyone ever caught more finely the differences between male and female feelings about heterosexual love than Pinter? Here, their differences of memory become almost a tragic divide. These two live together in what they call love, and yet on the memories of their initial and most intimate moments there is this unchangeable discrepancy. This hairline crack could become an abyss - at times it seems very large, but they live with it calmly. Pinter, now in his 70s, can still seem the most modern playwright alive, but again and again he puts himself at the end of long traditions. He is, it often seems, the last modernist, the last classicist, and, in plays like Night, the last romantic.