A Night Out

Summary

BBC Television produced Pinter’s A Slight Ache, A Night Out and The Basement in a triple bill in the Theatre 625 strand.

Theatre play

A Night Out by Harold Pinter [more information]

Play synopsis

'Albert Stokes is an emotionally inarticulate loner, socially awkward and fearful of women. As his tormentor Gidney observes, he is "a mother’s boy": at 28, he still lives with his needy and controlling mother, who maintains him in a childlike state of dependency and worries that he might be shaming his long-dead father and grandmother by leading an "unclean life". The night out of the title is a work party, a hard-won escape for Albert from his prison home which turns to humiliation when he is unfairly accused of improperly touching a female colleague. Returning home, the drunken Albert rebels against his mother’s hectoring and comes close to striking her down. When, later that night, he is picked up by a lonely and desperate girl [...] he cruelly uses her to re-enact his relationship with his mother, casting himself in a dominant role’ (source: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/946293/index.html).

Production history

Although Pinter first conceived of this play as a work for television, its first performance was on BBC Radio (1 March 1960, Third Programme). The next month, on 24 April 1960, it was produced by ABC for ITV. It has also been performed on the stage.

Date of transmission

Monday 13 February 1967

Time

9.05-10.05pm

Series

Theatre 625

Channel

BBC2

Production company

BBC

Credits

Director

Christopher Morahan

Producer

Michael Bakewell

Playwright

Harold Pinter

Designer

Peter Seddon

Cast

Sydney Arnold	Mr Ryan
Kevin Barry	Coffee-stall Keeper
John Castle	Seeley
Patrick Cato	Gidney
Christopher Chittell	Horne
Deirdre Costello	Eileen
Avril Elgar	The Girl
Adrienne Frame	Betty
Geoffrey Gilbert	Barrow
Richard Moore	Kedge
Peter Pratt	Mr King
Billy Russell	Old Man
Tony Selby	Albert Stokes
Vivien Sherrard	Joyce
Anna Wing	Mrs Stokes

Print sources

Title

A Night Out (BBC, 1967) (Archive file)

Archive

BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC) [more information]

Address

Peppard Road
Caversham Park
Reading
Berkshire
RG4 8TZ
UK

Telephone

+44 (0)118 948 6281

Email

heritage@bbc.co.uk

Website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/research/wac

Access

The WAC is open from 9.30am to 5.00pm on Wednesdays to Fridays throughout the year to academics, postgraduate students and writers by appointment.

Reference

T5/1722 A Night Out, 1967

Notes

This file contains internal documents pertaining to the production (budget, casting notes, properties list, etc), correspondence, an audience research report, and clippings from many newspaper reviews.

Title

Finely Timed Crescendo in Pinter Play (Newspaper review)

Author/creator

Sylvia Clayton (Reviewer)

Reference

Daily Telegraph, 14 February 1967

Title

Radio Times, 2 February 1967 (Magazine)

Linking notes

mentioned in article, p. 19

Title

Radio Times, 9 February 1967 (Magazine)

Linking notes

article, p. 19; listing, p. 25

Title

Study of Rising Tension (Newspaper review)

Author/creator

R. W. Cooper (Reviewer)

Reference

The Times, 14 February 1967

Associated programmes

A Slight Ache (BBC, 1967)
A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter
BBC2 (Theatre 625)

The Basement (BBC, 1967)
The Basement by Harold Pinter
BBC2 (Theatre 625)