Fans In Ramallah

"The atrocity in New York? was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of the United States."-Harold Pinter, Nov. 2002

I have no quarrel with Harold Pinter winning the Nobel. Tom Stoppard, Philip Roth, J.M. Coetzee and Alice Munro are only a few of the Anglophones worthier of the prize, but Pinter's not a joke pick like Dario Fo, and anyway a prize won by Toni Morrison and Boris Pasternak but not by Joyce, Eliot, Proust or Nabokov isn't worth getting excited about either way.

Nor do I have any quarrel with Pinter being a douchebag; anyone who gets upset by the gaseous political ditherings of artists deserves to get upset.

I draw attention to the inane quote above because it gives me an opportunity to mention New York Press Arts & Entertainment Editor Jonathan Leaf's wonderful new play The Caterers, which is playing through the 30th at Altered Stages on W. 29th Street between 7th and 8th Aves. (Call 212-868-4444 for more info.)Ê Having won rave reviews, not least from Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal, The Caterers really is a must-see, not least because one of the four characters, a gaseous ditherer of an antiquted British playwright who says things like "I have fans in Ramallah!" and surrenders his dignity, Harrow-style, in his zeal to show his love for jihad, is about as good a takedown of Pinter's ilk as you'll ever see.