Pinter

Sean O'Casey said of Pinter's plays: "Pinter wears gloves so that not even a fingerprint is deposited in the writing."
Does he mean that there is nothing of the playwright himself in the plays, or that there is nothing human in the plays? Not quite sure.
His plays are a bit Kafkaesque in that characters are introduced, usually ordinary people, who are subjected to torments for which there appears to be no reason why they are committed. You can put your own interpretation as to why they are being tormented - is it real or imagined? Is the State involved? Actors like playing the roles because they can imagine what they wish to appear to be, and so can be mysterious and, therefore (in their eyes) profound.
I am reminded of what Arthur Schnabel said about playing the piano when I hear the word "Pinteresque", referring to the pauses he is famous for : "The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where art lies."
I never much liked Harold Pinter's plays, though "The Caretaker" is rather good. "The Homecoming" is dreadful I think.
I saw "The Homecoming" in its first production on tour, in Cardiff. I recall there being a "box" with children and their parents in it. The kids laughed a lot during the play and I could not understand why; now I think I know the reason: the actors' response to a remark made by another is not to say the most reasonable or expected thing but the opposite - the least logical, the least expected - and this can be amusing. People laugh at Pinter's plays but it's not at the way the play is dramatically effective in the way Shaw, say, or Ibsen is; no, it's at the way it isn't. Which was why those children found "The Homecoming" amusing. The exchanges were, to them amusing, like those between two comics.
But the play is not amusing at all. I think Joan Bakewell, a former girlfriend, called it pornographic. I found it not so much pornographic as nasty with not a trace of humanity in it.