Ashes to Ashes and Other Plays
by Harold Pinter

THE STORIES: ASHES TO ASHES.

A man interrogates a woman about her lover and involvement in wartime atrocities.

The woman is haunted by appalling memories: genocide, deportation, and most disturbingly, a tenderly recalled masochistic-erotic relationship with a modern Herod-like infanticide.

In fact, she may never have experienced these things.

(1 man, 1 woman.) MONOLOGUE.

The speaker, called only Man, inhabits a shabby room and spends the play addressing another man who, it finally turns out, might be his brother.

But the armchair the Man addresses is empty.

Moreover, there are hints that he might be institutionalized.

Talk of sport and literature gives way to reminiscences of romance.

It emerges that the speaker loved a woman but that she transferred her favors to the invisible occupant of the chair.

(1 man.) PARTY TIME.

A suave power-broker is throwing a party at which his guests prattle of exclusive health clubs, idyllic island retreats and past romantic liaisons.

Meanwhile in the streets outside there is violent disorder that is being savagely suppressed.

(5 men, 4 women.) PRECISELY.

This sketch reveals a conversation between two women working for the government who want to convince their country to engage in nuclear war.

(2 men.) PRESS CONFERENCE.

A Minister of Culture, formerly the head of the Secret Police, holds a press conference in this political sketch about a repressive regime.

(1 man, various men/women.)