| "Moonlight," which premiered at
the Almeida Theater in London in 1994, is a family play like "The
Homecoming" and "The Caretaker." Here Ian
Holm brilliantly portrayed a dying former civil servant, being
visited by a friendly couple whom he dislikes, and speaking on
the phone to his n'er do well sons, possibly gangsters, who refuse
to visit him. Displaying Pinter’s unique blend of humor and menace,
the sons pretend to be Chinese launderers when their father phones.
His wife, Anna Calder-Marshall, attends him at his bedside, quietly
knitting during his tirades. In a flashback to earlier times,
their daughter is seen in banter with her brothers, but at the
present, she may be dead. Confined to an upstairs room,
she recounts her trip in the moonlight, which seems to represent
death. Pinter later revised the work to depict her at the
opening, silently wandering through the rooms where the action
takes place.
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