Background
One for the Road, considered Pinter's "statement about the human rights abuses of totalitarian governments" (Rich), was inspired by Pinter's visit to Turkey with American playwright Arthur Miller as vice presidents of International Pen and his "rage" at talking to two young Turkish women who did not believe that torture of innocent political prisoners occurred or that, if it did, the victims may have deserved it and suffered less than Pinter did about it (13–14).
As he explains further in his interview with Nicholas Hern, "A Play and Its Politics", conducted in February 1985 and published in 1985 in the revised and reset Eyre Methuen hardback (5–23) and in 1986 in the Grove Evergreen paperback (7–23) and illustrated with production photographs taken at the premiere by Ivan Kyncl, torture of political prisoners in countries like Turkey "is systematic" (13). Due to the tolerance and even support of such human rights abuses by the governments of Western countries like the United States, Pinter emphasizes (prophetically it turned out given later revelations about extraordinary rendition) in One for the Road how such abuses might happen in or at the direction of these democracies too.
In this play the actual physical violence takes place off stage; Pinter indirectly dramatizes such terror and violence through verbal and non-verbal allusions to off-stage acts of repeated rape of Gila, physical mutilation of Victor, and the ultimate murder of their son, Nicky. The effects of the violence that takes place off stage are, however, portrayed verbally and non-verbally on stage.
Though in the interview, Pinter says that he himself "always find agitprop insulting and objectionable now, of course I'm doing the same thing" (18). He observes that "when the play was done in New York, as the second part of a triple-bill, a goodly percentage of people left the theatre when it was over. They were asked why they were going and invariably they said, 'We know all about this. We don't need to be told.' Now, I believe that they were lying. They did not know about it and did not want to know" (18).
Read more about this topic: One For The Road (Harold Pinter Play)
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