If you have been following this blog, or if you know me, you know I teach high school. For this category, I was originally going to use Shakespeare's Othello. I teach this play to my students and figured that since I was rereading it anyway, I might as well count it here. You know, two birds, one stone. One of my students told me it didn't count because it was something I had already read. Look, I figured it'd count since I had to reread it -- not like I was counting Romeo and Juliet that I read 15 years ago and hadn't read since. (If you'll remember, I even reread Frankenstein and counted it here.)
Anyway, I decided to read another play by Harold Pinter. In college I had to read several of his plays and remembered liking them because they were thought-provoking and different. When I went to Houston a couple of weeks ago, we visited a used bookstore and I picked up a three-play collection by Pinter. I chose to read A Kind of Alaska for this category. This is a short, one-act play that I read in it's entirety on April 22.
A Kind of Alaska only has three characters in it and is set in a sort of hospital room. The main character, Deborah is just waking up from a 29 year sleep. Through her dialogue with Hornby (her sort of doctor), she pieces back together the time she has lost. She has trouble believing him at first. She constantly asks questions about her family and her parents and how Hornby got her to that room. She believes that he has taken her away from her family.
Eventually Hornby describes how Deborah slipped into this sleep. She and her family were having dinner one night and Deborah got up to move a vase of flowers. There she froze. They pried the vase from her hands and sent her off to this hospital. Her family had given up hope of her recovery. It's not really a coma, there was no traumatic injury, she a dazed sleep. The only people who believed she would awaken were Hornby and Deborah's sister, Pauline. It isn't until Pauline comes into the room that Deborah comes to believe Hornby's story a little. At first she doubts it and says that Pauline must be an aunt she never met because her sister was much younger than that.
This play is short and to the point, as Pinter usually is. There isn't a lot to it but it was a worthwhile read.
3 Stars.
(P.S. Othello is always good. And teenagers like it because they can relate to the jealousy, rumors, and lies in it. It's just like high school.)