The History of Production of the Works of Harold Pinter
The Black and White (1959)
Harold Pinter
Play script
English
In this short sketch, two old female buddies, with little to do and nowhere to go, make small talk over soup in a crowded milk bar. It was first performed as part of the 'One to Another' revue at the Lyric Hammersmith (London), in 1959; it was performed on BBC Radio in 1964.
Browse productions of The Black and White in the database
Date of Composition: 1959 Confidence Level
Adapted From: The Black and White (1955)
Adapted Work Note: The sketch was adapted form a first-person narrative short prose piece.
Linked Works
The Black and White
Linked Places
The Black and White Milk Bar (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))
The Black and White revue sketch is set in this Milk bar at 68 Fleet Street, no longer extant. Pinter would frequent this establishment with his friends on late nights out in London. Its location was convenient for them as Fleet Street would be where they would alight from buses from West London via Marble Arch (as the First Old Woman recounts in the sketch, correctly naming the 294 night bus) and catch buses home to Hackney.
Marble Arch (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))
In The Black and the White, the First Old Woman says she has got the 294 all-night bus from Marble Arch to the milk bar on Fleet Street. This is the accurate route of the 294 night bus in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Publishers
Samuel French Ltd on (1960)
Appears in French's Acting Edition of Sketches from One to Another, by John Mortimer, N.F. Simpson & Harold Pinter, London: Samuel French, pp. 10-12.
Characters
First Old Woman (Age: old, Female)
Listed in play script as 1st Old Woman.
Unnamed character from 'The Black and White'
Second Old Woman (Age: old, Female)
Listed in play script as 2nd Old Woman.
Unnamed character from 'The Black and White'
Resources
Full text on Drama Online (URL)
Type: Script
External Link: https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/the-black-and-white-iid-129784
Subscription required
Sources
Samuel French Website
http://www.samuelfrench.co.uk/p/17399/the-black-and-white
URL
The summary of the play is taken and adapted from Samuel French Publisher's website.
The British Library, Main Catalogue
French's Acting Edition of Sketches from One to Another, by John Mortimer, N.F. Simpson & Harold Pinter, London: Samuel French, pp. 10-12.
Library archive
Harold Pinter's Official Website
http://haroldpinter.org/plays/index.shtml
URL
Information about date of composition (finished) taken from site's webpage for Pinter's plays [accessed 20 October 2019].